A few months ago Shukan Asahi, a mass-circulation weekly magazine published in Tokyo, carried a 15-page lead article on the eta, Japan's three million social outcasts who live in 6,ooo segregated "special communities" (tokushu buraku). The illustrated article reported that these Japanese, identical with their fellows and legally free to live where they please, still follow a few restricted occupations and suffer discrimination at school, government office, and workplace. Numerous instances were cited to show how companies screen and reject job applicants with eta backgrounds; how prejudice leads to regular suicides of eta; how marriage within the group still is the rule; how eta have hardened in their attitudes toward the "outside" and strengthened social solidarity within their segregated areas. After describing poverty, poor housing and sanitation, unemployment, and apathy within the bureau, the article observed that neither of Japan's two major political parties has any effective policy for removing the eta from segregation and assimilating them into the larger society.

Two weeks ago at a Christian social center in the heart of Fukushima-chō, an eta community in Hiroshima, I interviewed a group of people, eta and non-eta, who are working with this problem at close range. The narrative which follows is a translation of a tape-recorded interview with one of these remarkable people, who herself is not an eta. Following her account I have summarized the historical background of this social problem and added some other current opinions concerning it.

Mrs. Etsuko Masuda, a gray-haired midwife in her fifties, speaks rapidly and profusely in the Hiroshima idiom:

"I was born on the twenty-eighth of November, 1905, in the town of Kōchi, in southern Shikoku. I was the fourth of six children; one brother and two sisters came before me, one brother and one sister after."

"My memory goes back only to about 1910, but I remember some of the things my mother told me about my father's youth. Our family came originally from Hiroshima, where my ancestors had been samurai of the lord of Asano. Father was born in 1860, and until he was seventeen he wore his hair in the old-fashioned topknot (chommage). Then he was forced by the new laws to have it cut. When he went to the barber he had his hair done up very beautifully in the formal fashion; his mother went along with him, and after the barber had done his work she held the cut hair in her hand and cried for a long time. "As a very young man Father left Hiroshima and went to Tokyo to school. He finished his school days there (I never knew the name of the school) and taught for a while, but when his own father died he was called back to Hiroshima to take his place as a village headman in Yamagata-gun, up in the mountains behind the city of Hiroshima. Father was in his twenties at the time, very young for a village head-man. But for some reason he soon left this and went to Kōchi to work in the local forestry bureau there. And there I was born.

"After the Meiji Restoration (1868) the position of the samurai and their families became very poor. They were dispossessed as a privileged military class and fell into bad times. Because of their immense pride many of them refused to go into trade. Father was no exception: he was conservative and old-fashioned and had his pride to consider; keeping up appearances meant everything to him, and he thought nothing was lower than a businessman. So like many of his old friends, he lost out in the new business era and the family gradually went downhill. Still, no matter how difficult things became, he never lost his spirit; he was always stiff and straightforward about what he believed."

"I got some of my own stubbornness from Father. I remember well when I was in the third grade in the primary school in Kōchi, one day Father and I were in the sitting room, and I saw what I thought was a black bean on the surface of the floor mat. I pointed it out to Father. `There's a black bean,' I said. Father retorted, `That's not a bean. That's a fly.' I said nothing for a moment, and after a while I noticed that the bean began to move across the floor. Father noticed it, too, and said, `See, what did I tell you, it's a fly. See it crawling.' But I would not admit that I was wrong. I insisted it was a black bean even though it was somehow moving. After that my nickname in the family was always kuromame, or black bean. Years later whenever anybody called me kuromame I would remember how mad Father had been at me for my stubbornness. We quarreled a good deal at that time; I think it was caused by Father's financial worries and the decline of the family's fortunes. He seemed to be inept at everything, but he never admitted it."

"When I was five, in the second grade, my younger brother was born. I remember that it was during the night. I woke up and smelled smoke and thought that something strange must be happening in the house. Then I heard the baby's crying. An old lady of the neighborhood was the midwife. This brother was a favorite of my mother. When he was three or four years old I remember how he would keep us laughing by imitating the fishmonger who peddled fish in the neighborhood. He carried a long bamboo pole balanced across his shoulders with a metal can at each end, and he would come round calling `Aji' or some such fish name in a loud voice. Little Brother's imitation of this was wonderful. I think this was when he was four."

"The next year he died. It was in February, and we were to celebrate Founding Day at the school. I was not a shy girl; I did well in school and took part in all the exercises. Mother was helping me to put on my hakama [short Japanese coat] in the bedroom, and Little Brother was sitting on the bedclothes beside us. He was coughing a little, and as I walked out of the house I remember thinking he must have caught a cold. When the ceremony at school was done I came back home, but Mother and Father were both gone, and Little Brother, too. I asked the old lady who lived next door what had happened, where was Suteo? She told me they had taken him to the hospital. She said for us to wait in the house, and my two sisters and I stayed there until nightfall. Then the news came that Little Brother had died. We went quickly to the hospital and learned that he had died after just one day's illness. It was diphtheria. They had operated, but without success. We began to cry, and Mother was wild with grief. She spent many days at the memorial tablet for Suteo, and she would pour milk for him before the tablet just as though he were alive to drink it."

"Things were very unhappy at home after this. The next year my elder brother died at the age of eighteen. At about this time Father quit his job at the office and opened a store selling tobacco and handicrafts from Miyajima. But he had never been in trade—he had such pride—he would display all his goods for sale, but when customers came he didn't know how to get them to buy. It wasn't his nature to be a storekeeper, so he didn't prosper. He hated having to demean himself in such a way. After that he took to fishing all the time. He would go every day to the river or even sometimes to the sea, and he brought back so many fish that we would distribute them to the people of our neighborhood. I remember this very well. We had more fish than we could possibly eat, because Father was so fond of fishing. But he couldn't make a living. We moved from place to place. Father liked to change houses. After two or three years in a place he would rent a new house it was never our own house that we lived in-and we went here and there looking for a less crowded place to live."

"Father and Mother were Buddhists, but they were not very strict about it. They taught me to put my hands together before the altar, but Buddhism never was something about which I personally had any feeling. When I was in the fifth grade we moved next door to a temple, and I used to take the short cut through the back gate of the temple to get through to the next street. Sometimes I would go to hear the priest give a sermon from his high platform. I remember once when the priest told a story that must have dated from Tokugawa times. A priest met a samurai on a bridge, and somehow the priest's cloak was blown by the wind so that it touched the sword of the samurai. At this the samurai got very angry and drew his sword to kill the priest, but the priest tucked up his cloak and, putting his hands together, intoned his Namu Amida Butsu. The samurai became frightened and ran away. I thought it was a foolish story, and going to the temple seemed a foolish thing to do. Yet I sometimes went and did my best to listen. At about this time I first went to the Christian Sunday School in Kōchi. One of my friends was going there, and she took me with her; she was a Christian, and soon I began going to church on Sunday and to prayer meetings on Tuesday. God was inviting me, and so I became interested in Christianity. I had no interest in Buddhism, really."

"A few years later, when I was about fourteen, I met an evangelical missionary who had come to Köchi from America many years before. This must have been in 1919 or 1920. The missionary's name was Miss Annie Doud, and she had come from Aberdeen, Mississippi. She was twenty-five when she arrived in Japan in 1892, so that she was already in her fifties when I met her. She is still alive, I believe, somewhere in America. Here is her picture." (Square face with sad, determined eyes, high-pompadoured sandy hair, black silk high-necked dress, white ruffles and a cameo at the throat.)

"This woman came all the way from a foreign country to work for the poor people of Kōchi, a country district far from the center of Japan. In the beginning she went out to remote and mountainous places, where most Japanese would not go. She traveled in a palanquin carried by two men, or sometimes she would go on horseback into distant parts where even the palanquin couldn't go. From the first she went alone, without an interpreter; although she may have known a little Japanese before she arrived, it couldn't have been much."

"On her travels she soon became interested in poor children and orphans, and she brought two small children back to Kōchi from one trip and adopted them and raised them as her own children. Where she got them and how she arranged it I never knew. Gradually she gathered together a whole collection of girl orphans, without any help from others, and gave them some education at her home. Then as the group got bigger and bigger she found it impossible to do everything by her-self, and she communicated with a friend in America. Soon individual Americans began to support individual Japanese girls at Miss Doud's school in Köchi. When I entered the school somebody in America paid my fees, too; but Miss Doud never told us the names of our benefactors. We called them mama-san, these Americans who sent us money for so long."

"At first Miss Doud had the school at her house, but later some money came from America and she was able to build a small school. I have a picture of the school at home. All the girls boarded at the school. Half the day we studied, and the other half we did embroidery. The produce of our labor was sent to America, and each student had a monthly allotment of work. People in America would write to Miss Doud what they wanted embroidered and we would do the work. For every three yen worth of work we would get 25 sen pocket money from America. Miss Doud tried to discourage us from asking our families for money, but we were all getting some help from our parents."

"In the morning every day we had an hour of English, then music lessons, piano and songs sung together. There were about 100 girls in the school when I arrived, and they took turns leading the church services. During Miss Doud's early days in Kōchi she was helped by a British couple named Ellis. Mr. Ellis was supposed to be of noble birth. Mrs. Ellis had been sick, and the Japanese climate was supposed to be good for her health. They came first to Yokohama, but then they were told the climate in Köchi was better, and Mr. Ellis sent his wife there while he remained in his office in Yokohama. Mrs. Ellis gave some financial help to Miss Doud. Mr. Ellis would come to see his wife from time to time in his own motor launch from Yokohama."

"Miss Doud taught with her whole body, not just with her mouth. If there is anything good in me, it is because of her. Although I had an unknown benefactor in America and received four or five years of education at the school, I had no formal obligation whatever to fulfill after graduation. Nor did any of us. If we wanted to go to mission school we could; or we could go back home if we wished. All that she told us was that we should try to do as she did, to follow her example and interest ourselves in poor people or people who had troubles. She told us to welcome anyone who came to us; whether they were beggars or wealthy people made no difference, she said. She was friendly to everyone; I liked this best about her. It was through her concern for the tokushu buraku people that I first became interested in their problems and decided to do what work I could among them."

"Of course, I had known about the buraku people since childhood. From the time I was in the third grade many of the eta children who lived in the buraku went to the same public school with me. In those days discrimination against the buraku people was general and quite overt. They lived in segregated areas as they do today; they were treated like animals and had a fierce inferiority complex. Like everyone else, Father said they were very different from other people and used all the old terms of prejudice toward them. The buraku people themselves would say that since they were of the buraku there was nothing they could do about it, no matter how much prejudice they felt. If discrimination was openly showed toward them, they would merely remain wrapped in silence. I remember feeling sorry for them, but as a child I had nothing to do with them and the problem did not concern me. Only after I met Miss Doud did the buraku begin to mean more to me."

"Today there is less prejudice against Christians in Japan, but when I was in Miss Doud's school things were different. While we were all leading the same group life at school we felt safe, but we knew that we could expect prejudice to show itself after we graduated. So before I left school Miss Doud told me that I must be ready for this, I must continue to go to church and otherwise to keep my faith strong. I graduated in 1924 and the same year returned to Hiroshima. I remember it was just after Grandmother died at the age of 92. Father and the family remained in Kōchi, but I had heard of an opportunity in Hiroshima. The city government had established a sort of neighborhood social center in Fukushima-chō, where buraku people lived; mostly they were shoemakers or people who slaughtered or sold meat. I decided to try for a job as a nursery worker and general helper at this center, or Rimpokan, as it is still called."

"This was a terribly hard decision for me to make. When my mother's brother, who was living in Hiroshima, heard about it, he declared that he would cut me off completely from my mother's side of the family. He was, I remember, a very old-fashioned person. Up until the end of the Second World War (he was killed by the atom bomb in 1945) he kept a full suit of armor standing in the front entrance of the house at night; and a samurai's spear and shield always hung from the crossbeam in his bedroom. He told me that the work I contemplated was unclean, that it would ruin the family name; he warned me he would disinherit me. He made me so mad by his stubbornness that my own stubbornness was aroused, and I told him that since he refused to understand, I would no longer recognize him as my uncle. We had a bad scene, and I left the house. I got the job at the Rimpokan, but soon I had trouble there, too. The head of the Rimpokan was a Buddhist, and he told me that, since Buddhism had a very strong hold in Fukushima-chō, if the city officials found out there was a Christian working there, it would mean trouble for him and for me. He urged me to hide the fact that I was a Christian and not to say anything about it."

"This may have been my testing time. I thought that if I hid my Christianity and then failed to do a good job, it would be worse than if a Buddhist had failed, and I would be in trouble with myself. After all, I had gone to the Rimpokan in the first place because I was a Christian, and I thought I could not stay there if I had to conceal my faith. So I told everyone clearly from the beginning that I was a Christian. It was my kuromame nature, I guess; anyhow, everybody recognized that I was stubborn, and they didn't bother to try to change my mind. As soon as I declared openly that I was a Christian I had no trouble, nobody asked me anything; apparently they thought it couldn't be helped. Some of my friends at Miss Doud's school failed to state their faith clearly and openly, and they ran into difficulties along the way. But since that time I have never had any real difficulty from being identified as a Christian."

Not long after that I was married. This was in 1925. I met my husband at the Rimpokan, where he was on the staff. He was not a buraku person, but neither did his family have the pretensions that mine had; and since he was working among the buraku people I knew there would be difficulties with my family over the match. When I made up my mind to marry him, my father's older brother went to consult my maternal uncle, the proud one. But he said that since I no longer had any connection with the family I could do as I liked. He refused to become involved in any way in the marriage transaction. So I was married after this one consultation only, without the sanction of my mother's side of the family. For several years we worked side by side at the Rimpokan, and then my husband became its head, replacing the devout Buddhist who had been there when I first came. My husband held that position for more than ten years. Later he was transferred to the social welfare department of the city of Hiroshima. For more than a decade after my marriage I never set foot in my mother's brother's house. But later on my uncle softened somewhat. By this time the buraku and the people who lived in them were becoming more generally talked about, and I think he understood a little what my motives had been. Finally I went to see him, and he received me; he really was delighted to see me, and he even came to call on us in our new home."

"After my husband left the Rimpokan to work downtown I began to work as a midwife in the buraku neighborhood where we lived. Before the war nearly all babies were delivered at home by midwives. Only abnormal cases would enter clinics or hospitals. But just after the war an American came here and gave training to midwives in American maternity-clinic procedures. This person said that in the United States nearly all expectant mothers went to maternity clinics or hospitals. After that the midwives in Hiroshima began to turn their homes into "clinics." Now 70 per cent to 80 percent of all babies are born in these "clinics," and only 20 percent to 30 percent in private homes. Of course, there are many qualified doctors, but licensed midwives still do much of the work. The kind of house-to-house practice I was doing when I began has almost disappeared."

"However, I was kept busy with my practice during the war; and on the morning the atom bomb fell I was on my way to give nursing care to nine new babies I had delivered in the western outskirts of Hiroshima. I was in a hurry, and since I had trouble getting a streetcar I started out on foot in the direction of Koi. I was wearing mompei (coarse cotton trousers) and carrying my satchel and a silk umbrella. When I had got about halfway across the big bridge between Fukushima and Koi I heard the sound of an airplane. I had just opened my umbrella, and swinging it around, I looked back over my shoulder but saw nothing. I turned back to go on over the bridge, and in the instant of turning I saw the flash. At the same moment I realized that my umbrella was on fire, and I sensed that everything behind me was burning. In my astonishment I was thrown completely off the bridge onto the riverbank below. For a few moments the air became very dark, but then I got up and the sky lightened again. I saw a plane disappearing in the distance, its sound growing more and more faint."

"I thought I had better get home quickly, and then I remembered that I was the head of a rescue unit. Since I had some responsibility I hurried back toward the nearest streetcar stop. But there I met a mob of people, many of them burned, rushing out of the city. From then on I was busy trying to give first aid. A crowd of children came, and I took them to an open field not far away. The next thing I remember was trying to put many of these children to sleep in that field. Finally toward night I got back to my house. It was then that I first realized that the whole back of my mompei had been burned off. My neighbor, Mrs. Nogi, saw me come in and she told me in such an embarrassed way that I had on absolutely nothing behind. All day I had been treating and waiting on people and I hadn't even noticed it. I was amazed. Our house had been knocked over, but I went inside the mess and took off the mompei and put on some others I found. That night I became sick. I had been burned on my back, on the backs of my legs and hands. I hurt so that I could barely move, but during the night someone came to ask me to deliver a baby. It was a girl of nineteen who was having her first baby, and she had been pulled out of a knocked-down house. Her leg was broken, and we couldn't make a fire to boil water, so I just cleaned the baby with a cloth and borrowed a shirt from somebody to wrap it in. On my way back I fainted and had to be carried home. From then on I stayed in bed. My burns healed in about eight months. Last year I had some fainting spells and my blood count was low, but I had an examination at the hospital, and I'm all right now."

"As far as the buraku is concerned, on the surface there have been some improvements, but underneath the problem still remains. Only the forms of prejudice are changing. When I was a girl people refused to eat with eta, to go into their houses or allow them to cross the threshold. But today there is fairly free access both ways. My five children are, of course, not eta, but they were brought up here in the buraku and have lived here all their lives. Naturally they have become aware of the problem. I know that when someone asks one of them, `Don't you live in Fukushima-chō?' the child is well aware of the implications of the question. They have made a conscious effort not to develop feelings of inferiority simply because they lived in this district, but of course this is difficult for them to avoid."

"Discrimination is worst when marriage is the issue. There still is a feeling that the buraku people have dirty blood, that they are in some way more closely akin to animals than ordinary people are-although such prejudice may be hidden. Young people nowadays are marrying into the buraku, or buraku people are marrying out of it, more than before, but this is still the most serious point of prejudice. On the whole, buraku people want to stay where they are, because there they are relatively safe. Limited in occupation and living area, apathetic and resigned, they have become hardened in their isolation. Since the war they have been somewhat more receptive toward Christianity, but Buddhism, especially Shin sect Buddhism, maintains a tight hold. My second and fourth sons have been baptized as Christians. The first and third sons have been to church with me since they were small children, and although they have not been baptized, they know the hymn book very well . . ."

Discrimination against the eta is ancient, predating the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century A.D., when Japanese society was divided roughly into the free and the base. After Buddhism became popular, a stigma attached to those who killed meat and worked with leather, and this Buddhist feeling fused with Shintō emphasis on ritual purification and an abhorrence of defilement, e.g., by blood or death. Certain groups from the lower levels of society became specialized in hereditary occupations as butchers, shoemakers, and workers in other despised trades. Later, during the civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, leather workers were needed to supply weapons and articles of armor, and for a time their status rose somewhat; but during the Tokugawa era (1615-(868) strict regulations kept the eta in place at the bottom of society. They were rigidly segregated by dwelling area on the banks of rivers or in other unproductive fringe districts. There they were forbidden to marry "ordinary" Japanese, and eventually the mere fact of living in a segregated community led to discrimination from outsiders, who regarded, and still regard, the eta with fear, disgust, and loathing.

In 1871, after the Meiji Restoration, the eta were legally emancipated and allowed to live where they wished; however, social and economic discrimination against them continued. In the early 1920s, when liberal ideas spread in educated circles, the eta became an object of concern. A movement called the Suiheisha [Levelers’ Association] developed, which adopted for its flag a crown of thorns and encouraged the eta to confront and accuse those who showed prejudice against them. These radical tactics shocked most Japanese, and the Suiheisha failed to achieve its goals through confrontation. However, its descendants survived and have reappeared, in weakened and transformed condition, in the post-World War II period. Along with a general radicalization of the "social movement" the eta have found themselves championed by new leagues and committees ostensibly devoted to their "liberation" and unquestionably eager for their votes. Ever since 1922 the "liberation" movement has been led by Matsumoto Jiichirō, Diet member from Fukuoka prefecture, himself a buraku person and leader of an extreme left-wing faction of the Socialist party. On the testimony of persons interviewed in Hiroshima, Matsumoto's Liberation Committee (Kaihō Iinkai) and later Liberation League (Kaihō Dōmei) were and are penetrated by Communists.

The Japanese government has not yet made any concerted effort to break up the eta communities or to provide more than remedial measures inside their boundaries. Some say this is because the eta are concentrated in western Japan, remote from Tokyo and out of the focus of national interest. A more likely cause for neglect is that, with new millions annually seeking jobs, the government can scarcely be eager to enlarge the variety of opportunities for eta. Some slow steps are being taken in the public-school system, where a program of "equality education" is under way; but it cannot be said that anything tangible has yet resulted from this.

One member of the Hiroshima City Assembly, a buraku person who is prominent in local efforts to improve the situation, insisted that neither conservatives nor Socialists have much real interest in solving the problem. "The conservatives try to exploit the buraku people," he said, "and to organize cliques of followers among them for personal gain. Socialists and Communists are emphasizing control through loyalty to party organizations; but in either case control, not freedom from prejudice, is the main objective. The prefectural government has built some public toilets, a few wells and water systems, and two new apartments accommodating 48 families. The Rimpokan provides a day nursery for loo children whose parents are working and some treatment for trachoma and other ailments common in the buraku.” Generally, though, prejudice persists and the real problem of assimilation remains unsolved. 'Most Japanese simply avoid talking about the subject and pretend it doesn't exist. But as long as it is unsolved we Japanese cannot afford to laugh at you Americans in Little Rock."

Other opinions reflect the spread of leftist propaganda in the buraku. In Kyoto the Buraku Problems Research Institute, closely associated with the Liberation League, has published a number of books on the subject. In 1955, for example, Tatsuya Naramoto, executive director of the Institute and a professor at Ritsumeikan University, wrote a book in which he blamed the whole problem on the "feudalism" which continues to characterize Japanese social relationships. According to Naramoto, this "feudalism" is encouraged by American policy toward Japan. "The thing that intensifies discrimination and nourishes the buraku today is American imperialism combined with reactionary forces in our own country. The great road to liberation lies in resisting this by the power of democracy." 1 In Hiroshima the head of the local branch of the Liberation League, an eta shoemaker, took a similar line: "Strikes in the buraku or other direct action will not succeed, because the big capitalists would bring in machines to make the shoes, and where would we be then? Already our business is declining in the face of machine-made products. The U.S. and the big capitalists in Tokyo are putting us out of business. Our league constantly is talking about what sort of action to take, but we have shifted from direct action to training young leaders who will not have an inferiority complex. Political consciousness is low, and the buraku people feel strongly only about local or sensational issues, such as suicides caused by discrimination. Labor union people think they are better than we are and won't bring in unions. Nobody will spend any of his own time or money in the buraku if he can help it.

The magazine article with which I began and a number of similar articles in other magazines and newspapers have done more than anything else to bring the eta to widespread public attention in recent months. What the Japanese call masu komi, mass communications, undoubtedly are playing an important part in spreading awareness of all sorts of problems, social and otherwise. Government officials confirm this judgment: prefectural authorities in Hiroshima showed me two scrapbooks of news clippings, many of them concerning the eta, compiled within the last four or five years.

Today [1958] many of the old proscriptions against meat eating and the like have declined or vanished. Not all butchers or shoemakers are eta, by any means. But the segregated communities remain, and antagonism against those who live within them is still harsh. Animal characteristics often are imputed to eta: for example, there is a superstition that every eta contains one dog bone in his skeleton. Commonly they are identified with yotsu, the number four, which implies close association with four-legged animals. (The meaning of this term may be communicated silently by extending four fingers of one hand; sometimes two fingers of each hand, or three of one and one of the other, are used.) In recent years more and more eta have been able to "pass" on the outside, in the swarms of Tokyo, Osaka, and elsewhere. Since no color difference is involved the problem is not the same as that faced by an American Negro. However, "passing" means cutting off completely from the buraku; even a postmark on a letter might give away one's origins, and the consequences of failure to "pass" are catastrophic. On, the whole, however, centuries of discrimination have created reactions among the eta which tend to keep them together within the buraku.

Olson, Lawrence. “Mrs. Masuda and the Buraku People.” Ch. 6, Dimensions of Japan: A Collection of Reports Written for the American Universities Field Staff. New York: American Universities Field Staff, Inc., 1963; 64-77.