In the show <i>House M.D</i>, Dr. House explained his desire to become a doctor as based on an experience as a kid with the Japanese caste system:<p><i>"When I was 14 my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock climbing with this kid from school. He fell, got injured and I had to bring him to the hospital. We came in through the wrong entrance and passed this guy in the hall. It was a janitor. My friend came down with an infection and the doctors didn't know what to do. So they brought in the janitor. He was a doctor. And a Buraku. One of Japan's untouchables. His ancestors had been slaughterers, grave diggers. And this guy, he knew that he wasn't accepted by the staff, he didn't even try. He didn't dress well. He didn't pretend to be one of them. The people that ran that place, they didn't think that he had anything they wanted. Except when they needed him. Because he was right. Which meant that nothing else mattered. And they had to listen to him."</i><p>I always liked that little monologue.
The burakumin are the best argument against genetic causes of heritable lower intelligence (often invoked when talking about African American populations). In Japan many burakumin show significantly lower scores on standardized intelligence tests, however when they migrate out of Japan their scores recover to normal levels. Social caste is heritable. This was a favorite zinger that my evolutionary biology teacher liked to spring on unsuspecting students that tried to argue that they could demonstrate that low iq among AAs was due to genetic differences.
At least domestically, it is more of an open secret than an actual secret. (By the way, the politically correct way to refer to the Buraku is "Douwa")<p>This open secret history of persecution has been utilized by these communities to attain some more political and economic power. People who do not have a Douwa ancestry will sometimes move into these communities to be associated with the region and put themselves under the implied protection of the Douwa (since companies / government must tread very lightly around them).<p>Interestingly, I recently learned that the school curriculum is starting to remove sections about the Douwa history. Once the "open secret" is less known, the caste will be able to wield less political power, and this change is obviously intentional.
This is one of those sad human truths right? Put 1000 babies on an island and let them grow up free from influence. Somehow a group will find another group and marginalize them. Maybe skin color, maybe hair color, maybe height, maybe weight. Seems like humans do this in just about every culture, and although we try to "hide" it in political correctness - it still happens.<p>Wonder if this is just some part of the bad side of the "humans need other humans to connect and bond" coin - "humans need enemies so they can bond together against, and if there is a lack of a real enemy they will somehow construct one". I mean go to a nice middle class soccer match. Some mom will be the outcast for her kid always being late to practice, or something...
Many churches and temples in Ogaki have a sign in the window saying "We will under NO CIRCUMSTANCES assist with third-party ancestry investigations (身元調査)." This is largely because parish records (and the analogous paperwork at temples) can leak burakumin status or Korean ancestry, both things which Japanese people have ample reason to not want publicized about them.<p>A sidenote:<p>I debated during college (in the US, prior to ever living in Japan, where I've been for about 10 years now).<p>I was mildly notorious in debate circles for running a particular "case" (proposed instantiation of a government policy supporting the resolution which one would, as the government side of a debate, have to win was beneficial) on any resolution which would support it. For example, the resolution might be "The government shall limit the information it records about it's citizens." One team of the debate has to convince the judge that they have a concrete idea for how to do that. The other team opposes either that concrete idea and/or says "That case doesn't actually support the proposition our opponents are forced to support."<p>The case was "abolish the koseki", a family register in Japan which was once considered semi-public information (this has been tightened up rather severely, but it still exists and companies often still ask to see yours) and which has a variety of ways to leak extraordinarily sensitive facts about one's family, in addition to being an odious institution for a host of other reasons. I say "notorious" for this case because, by American collegiate standards, the koseki is straight-out evil, and the reason we chose to run this case is because there are few ways to debate in favor of retaining it and all of them require you to be better versed at Japanese politics/policy than my debate partner and I were, which is unlikely to be true of any US debate team picked at random.<p>I like to believe that my one lasting contribution to debate is convincing a lot of tournament directors to change the traditional wording in resolutions "The government shall $DO_SOMETHING" to "The United States federal government shall $DO_SOMETHING", because when we interpreted the government to mean "Japanese government" the other team invariably said something along the lines of "That's not what the resolution writer intended", to which I would say "You being ignorant of a major first world nation whose internal political issues are well-reflected in the academic literature may make this debate inconvenient for you to win but that does not mean I'm not allowed to pick something which fits within the clear definition of the word 'government.'"<p>This drove people nuts.<p>Ten years later I just had to get a copy of my family's koseki to apply for an apartment lease, upon which the renting agent said "Oh, you're American. Do you even know what this is?" Yep -- funny how life works out. (Why does my apartment renting agent need my koseki? To determine whether I'm the right sort of people to live in the really nice apartment we're moving to. Does "right sort of people" sound ominous to you? YEP, exactly as bad as you think it is.)
>evidence, perhaps, that old, discriminatory habits may yet be consigned to history.<p>There's ample evidence with regard to foreigners in Japan already.
This is a bit controversial, as it is very arguable that some of those groups that's charted to eliminate discrimination against those groups exists for the sake of their existence.<p>In many of those areas, there are so many inflow/outflow of population (perhaps a majority, especially younger demographics, not aware of even such notion existed in the area) from "buraku" areas really doesn't mean anything. So some argue what they are doing is reopening a closed issue.<p>That's doesn't mean these discriminations do not exist, but there seems to be a lot of conflict of interest in the way the issue is handled.
There are some strange superstitions w.r.t. death in Japanese culture. In Japanese the number 4 sounds sort of like death so it's a number they avoid a lot (it's missing from many elevator options, similar to how 13 is skipped sometimes) and patterns of squares are sometimes avoided to prevent having 4 corners meet (especially with straw mats).<p>I had never heard of this, though. The class of untouchables who work close to death. Really interesting stuff.
Not sure what world you live in but I have never heard students argue in favor of African Americans having heritable lower intelligence. Such a discussion would instantly be shamed and publicized. Pretty sure your making this up.