Читать книгу A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture - Ben Stevens - Страница 17

In a country that remains as obsessed with a person’s ‘roots’ and family history as Japan, coming from burakumin stock can still cause someone some serious prejudice. The word itself means ‘people of the hamlet’—which is a nice way of saying that feudal-era burakumin were confined to an almost ghetto-like existence, forbidden to associate with non-burakumin to the extent that they were even required to have their own temples and shrines, so that they should live as isolated a life as possible.

In fact, burakumin were commonly known then as eta, or ‘full of filth’, and endured pretty much the same existence as the ‘untouchable’ class in India. They did the sort of jobs that were wholly necessary yet at the same time were considered unclean—think undertaking, tanning, and really anything that involved dead flesh and bodies—all the while being informed by Shinto priests that they were contaminating themselves with the impurities created by death. In fact, for sheer revulsion, their occupations were ranked equal to the crimes of bestiality and incest. Hence the reason why they were forbidden to associate with anyone of a ‘higher’ position than themselves in the feudal caste system—and they were right down there at the bottom.

Anything between 1—3 000 000 burakumin descendants live in Japan today, some (like the Ainu) doing their best to disguise their background, while others continue to live in the—mainly rural—areas where burakumin have traditionally had their ‘hamlets’.