Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

Back from Tokyo today. ただいま〜  Time for a rare update!  The new season has some new projects in the pipeline – stay tuned – but for now, something I’ve been sitting on a for a while.

I won third place in the 2010-11 FCCJ  Swadesh DeRoy scholarship.  ¡Jesus Cristo! My sincere thanks for such a wonderful, unexpected award.

Here’s the article.  Have a peek!

Whither the Buraku Liberation League?  Japan’s Human Rights at the Crossroads

Grey clouds in the winter sky, black soil in the bare flowerbeds, peeling white paint on the cold concrete walls: melancholy hangs heavily over the Aramoto Human Rights Centre, a monochrome milieu lightened only by the thick green ivy that colonises the squat building.

The atmosphere at the east Osaka centre was not always so gloomy.  Only ten years ago it was a thriving bureau for local Dōwa Measures funding, the estimated $134 billion in public money allocated to tackle the Buraku issue – dire living conditions and social discrimination endured by an estimated three million Burakumin, the descendants of Japan’s feudal-era outcasts.

As with the 4,533 Buraku areas across Japan, living standards in Aramoto were lifted dramatically.  Social housing replaced unsanitary slums, a health clinic and youth centre were constructed, tax breaks given to local businesses.

“The Burakumin awoke to the fact that [discrimination] was not their fault,” says Hiromu Nakata, 65, Secretary General of the Zenkokuren, a Buraku rights group, lighting another cigarette.  “Hardship remains, but the worst aspects of the problem have been solved.”

With this partial solution, in 2002 the Dōwa funding expired.  Its cash flow strangled and most pressing work complete, the Aramoto centre fell into decline.  Today the dilapidation of the building is a symbol of the wider malaise of the Buraku movement, hit by a perfect storm of dwindling resources, ageing activists and weak leadership.

How to rejuvenate the movement is hotly debated.  Reformers call a widening of the movement through collaboration with other minority groups, while others, opposed to the inclusion of non-Burakumin, advocate the status quo of fighting purely for Japan’s ‘invisible minority’.

For Japan, the ramifications of the debate are clear.  At stake are the hopes of a permanent solution to the Buraku issue, advances in minority rights and the establishment of a human rights protection system of an international standard.

A human rights alliance

Symbolic of the weakening of the movement is the slump of the Buraku Liberation League (BLL), the strongest Buraku rights group and founder of the post-war movement.  From over 200,000 in the 1970s, membership has shrunk to an all-time low of approximately 50,000.

“The decline is an inevitable corollary of improvements to the [Buraku] problem. Where discrimination disappears, movements inevitably weaken,” says Masayuki Ōga, 73, Honorary Director of the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute, in staccato Kansai dialect.

But the waning of the BLL need not be terminal, says Ōga. Instead it can act as a catalyst for “a revitalisation of the movement…a jump to a human rights alliance.”

Under the plan, the BLL would use its remaining trump cards (political experience, organisation and ability to mobilise activists) to open its human rights community planning schemes to Japan’s other minorities, such as Zainichi foreigners (those born in Japan but unable to claim nationality and denied suffrage), immigrant workers and disabled people.

The partnership would also lobby nationally for the common goal of pro-human rights legislative reform.  And it is here that the realisation of the idea becomes relevant to the ippan Japanese majority, which has hitherto regarded the Buraku struggle as an irrelevance generously indulged by government largesse.

Japan continues to refuse to introduce anti-discrimination legislation and an independent human rights institution, despite a United Nations call to do so in March last year.  For universal human rights to be enjoyed by all in Japan, government acquiescence to the UN demands is essential.  But without pressure from civil society calls for change continue to fall on deaf ears.

A human rights alliance, created from the ashes of the Buraku movement, would be a powerful voice for reform.  Ōga’s eyes spark with enthusiasm.  “It would change Japan from the bottom up”.

Opposition and intransigence

Hopes for the realisation of the alliance rely on the support of Burakumin activists and leaders, as well as other minority groups.  Scepticism and suspicion, however, exist in both camps.

Activists say that while problems such as substandard housing remain, the movement should concentrate just on the Buraku issue.

“We deal with bread-and-butter rights issues,” says Reiko Yamazaki, Under-Secretary General of the Aichi BLL.  “The focus must be on Buraku communities and the problems within.”

The sparse statistics available show that discrimination does linger.  A 2005 Osaka human rights attitudes survey showed that 20.2% believe that one’s Buraku origin is a factor in choosing a marriage partner.  Inequality also remains: Buraku families in Tottori prefecture are three times as dependent on welfare as others in the area.

The movement’s leadership is similarly wary about reform.  Shigeru Murai, the amiable Chief Director of Osaka Human Rights Association, sees the alliance as a cynical attempt to rescue the dying movement.

“It’s presumptuous to think that simply changing the name [of the BLL] in order to survive would make any difference…it’s a kind of camouflage.”

Alongside this reasoned opposition exists a pattern of antipathy towards collaboration with other minorities.  Activists see the Buraku issue as unique and therefore to be dealt with separately from other human rights problems.  Collaboration would belittle the plight of the Burakumin, equating their struggle with other Japanese social issues.

Jefferson R. Plantilla, Research Director of HURights Osaka, explains: “There is a sense of exceptionalism felt among members of the BLL, the idea that they are at the vanguard of their own particular issue, and don’t want the assistance of others.”

At best, this jealous protection of the BLL’s status harms the chances of the realisation of the alliance.  At worst, it contributes to the movement’s decline.  During the Dōwa funding years the BLL failed to nurture friendly relations with other minorities and missed an opportunity to build a prototype human rights partnership.

“Alliances weren’t cultivated…if they’d been created, other groups could step in and assist the BLL while it’s now weakening.  The expertise and experience of groups working towards human rights in Japan could have been pooled,” says Plantilla.

Stung by this experience, minority rights groups are also pessimistic about the alliance.  In Osaka, where Zainichi Koreans and Burakumin often live cheek-by-jowl, local cooperation has been hindered by ideological intransigence within the BLL, as the historical influence of communism causes frosty relations with ‘capitalist’ South Korean Zainichi groups.  Local BLL branches have “purge[d] activists who support collaboration,” says a source at an Osaka Zainichi group, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  He pithily sums up the situation.  “Without cooperation, the movement cannot develop.”

Back in Aramoto, hopes for the alliance seem as weak as the watery sunshine that momentarily bathes the centre in pale light.  Yet failure to reform is bad news for all connected to the movement.

On its current course the Buraku movement is facing a slow but inevitable death, its work unfinished.  Zainichi foreigners still lack basic rights.  And, with little pressure on the government for reform, it is doubtful that Japan will see the basic human rights legislation and institutions enjoyed by other developed countries.

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