Working in the Ghetto and Hating the White Girl

It seems this blog is gradually becoming "Mellen observes Japan", but I just learned something very interesting about the community in which I work and thought I would share my findings.

Recently, a teacher at one of the Jr. High schools I work at asked my coworker and I to present a special class on discrimination in our home country. This class isn't for all the students, but rather just the students who come from burakumin backgrounds. I'm familiar with what burakumin means from my college days, but I hadn't heard much talk about it since moving to Japan. Burakumin is a term used for Japanese people who were outcastes during the fuedal period in Japan. They were typically people whose professions were considered "impure", often dealing with death (like executioners or undertakers). They were set apart from the rest of society, and often lived in ghettos and isolated communities, thus the name (buraku meaning tribe and min meaning people). Even though the system was dissolved, there still exists discrimination against people who come from burakumin backgrounds, especially in terms of employment and marriage.

It is a very distinctly Japanese kind of discrimination. To put it bluntly, it's just a kind of snobbery. In pretty much every way, these people are regular Japanese citizens. They don't practice a different set of beliefs, speak a different language, or possess any distinct physical characteristics that set them apart; none of the things we'd "normally" discriminate against in the West. The only thing that's different about them is their historical background. And going back to the 1800s, that system of discrimination was supposed to have been abolished. Yet there have been groups that have compiled huge books about which people have come from burakumin backgrounds, and sold on the black market to companies to check before hiring people or look up someone before they allow their child to marry. As always, you can get more information from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin

At any rate, burakumin wasn't the thing I was surprised to find out about. Rather, it was finding out that a large percentage of my students come from burakumin areas, and that Ichikawa town has the most buraku areas in all of Hyogo Prefecture. If you do go and read the Wiki article, you'll see that Hyogo is one of the places that still has heavy discrimination against burakumin populations. The school in the more affluent part of town doesn't have any burakumin students, while at the school with the more problematic kids, apparently half of them come from these discriminated areas.

Looking at it now, seeing it from a discriminatory Japanese perspective, I see why my town is having such hard times. There are hardly any businesses in Ichikawa, and very little development. I don't live in Ichikawa because there simply wasn't housing available here, and no one is building anything new here. People don't move to Ichikawa, and the population is decreasing steadily. One of my elementary schools even shut down because there weren't enough students. While most of the other small, poorer towns in the area have amalgamated to improve conditions (for example, Kamikawa to the north of us used to be 3 seperate towns that became one) no other town will take Ichikawa in. It had never occured to me that some of these problems could have their roots in discrimination.

I never realized it before, but apparently, I've been working in a Japanese ghetto.

Next week, Aya and I will be talking to the kids who have these backgrounds about discrimination in America. Then, we'll make apple crisp with them. It seems kind of opposite to me, talking to a discriminated group about discrimination problems, rather than talking about the problem with the other students. Still, I'm sure they'll enjoy getting dessert out of it. I guess they just want the kids to realize they aren't alone in facing discrimination. As a foreign minority here, I can actually understand it to some extent.

Part of me feels like everyone should come to Japan at some point to understand what it's like to racially profiled as a white person in an affluent society. I'm not sure there is any other country in the world where that's possible. The looks of people afraid to sit next to you on the train, the old people who mumble under their breath about us thinking we don't understand, the parents who pull their children a little closer when we walk by. Me, the horrifying foreign blonde girl.

But, in all fairness, I AM different. I look weird. I speak a strange language most of the time. I don't hold 100% to the customs of this culture. There's an EXCUSE to discriminate against me, be it justifiable or not. For these kids, who are Japanese in every way, it just seems stupid that they'd be looked down upon.

Just another observation about Japan. End of rant.