VOICE, SILENCE, AND SELF: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan | By Christopher Bondy.
Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 386. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University Press [distributor], 2015. xiii, 184 pp. US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-08840-5.
Christopher Bondy begins Voice, Silence, and Self with a question at the heart of his remarkable narrative of two burakumin communities: How can one be a member of a minority group and not know it? The answer begins with invisibility. The group must be invisible both literally and metaphorically. Burakumin are physiologically, culturally, socially, and linguistically identical to majority Japanese. They don’t behave differently; they don’t worship differently; they don’t dress differently; they don’t eat different foods. In this sense they resemble closeted homosexuals in that they do not exist in the consciousness of the rest of society, but with the fundamental difference that many burakumin themselves do not know their identity. To maintain that level of ignorance, silence is necessary. Both the members of the minority and the rest of society must not mention its existence. As with homosexuality in 1950s America, one might at one level know that same sex relationships occur, but neither the practice nor the actors can be discussed. As Ralph Ellison said in the different context of African American discrimination, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” African Americans and American homosexuals did not remain silent; they forced the rest of America to see them. Japanese burakumin have not.
Bondy explains why and how that silence is maintained. He does so through the intimate description of fifteen years of the experience of school children in two majority-buraku districts, Kuromatsu and Takagawa, which have adopted two conflicting strategies for challenging discrimination. Kuromatsu has chosen silence, a conscious decision to subsume buraku identity within a broader approach of community improvement and general human rights advocacy, avoiding open discussion of buraku issues even in the face of discrimination. Takagawa has chosen voice. It celebrates buraku identity, dismisses assimilation, and confronts discrimination directly and aggressively. The two communities are affiliated respectively with the Liberal Assimilation Association (Jiyuu Douwa Kai or JDK) and the Buraku Liberation League (Buraku Kaihou Doumei or BLL), which in turn trace their origins to separate conservative and leftist organizations from the Meiji period.
The book begins with a lucid and sophisticated explanation of the meaning of silence in the face of social phenomena, with an emphasis on the agency that avoiding a topic requires. It is clear that Bondy wants his readers to know that the silence of the JDK is an active strategic choice, no more passive or accepting of discrimination than the BLL’s openness and, at times, aggressive reaction to discrimination. Chapter 2 introduces the phenomenon of burakumin, how they are putatively descended from feudal outcasts legally defined as “non-humans” in the Tokugawa period and how their identity has been maintained since the elimination of legal social statuses in 1872 by the meticulous notation of prior non-human status in the family registry, a governmental institution accurately identified by Bondy and others as a “state-supported tool of discrimination and control” (20). In chapter 3, Bondy describes the two communities and their opposing strategies. Chapters 4 and 5 are the core of the book. Bondy addresses in detail the school environments created by the two approaches: a scrupulous avoidance of buraku identity in JDK-dominated Kuromatsu and its celebration by the BLL in Takagawa. Chapter 6 then follows the children after they leave their buraku districts to go to high school and are forced to engage with majority society.
Even for a reader relatively familiar with the buraku issue, the book is replete with startling observations, the most fundamental of which is the pervasive effect of silence. In chapter 6 Bondy describes how, despite their radically different ideological and emotional preparation, both groups of children react identically once they leave the “protective cocoon” of their home districts. They embrace silence, what Bondy refers to as “bracketing” their identities but which can also be described as covering or passing. They do so, first of all, because they can. It is impossible for anyone to know their origin without either asking, a social impossibility in most circumstances, gaining access to the now closed family registry, or hiring one of the many detective agencies specializing in discovering the family origins of prospective spouses and employees. But they also cover because of the ignorance of majority society, which makes it much simpler to just be quiet. Junko’s story is illustrative. A Takagawa burakumin trained to be open about her identity, she had nonetheless remained silent with her boyfriend of almost a year. When, with considerable trepidation, she told him, his reaction was “Burakumin? What’s that?” Had her boyfriend been from eastern Japan where burakumin are virtually absent, his wonder might have been understandable, but he was from the same prefecture as Takagawa, a prefecture with a large burakumin population. For the interested reader, Bondy notes that he stayed with her (122).
Junko’s story raises a series of questions that lurk behind the tension between silence and voice. If majority Japanese don’t even know that burakumin exist, why does discrimination persist? Even more fundamental, does discrimination actually exist, or are burakumin afraid of a specter that disappeared long ago with Japanese urbanization and social mobility? Bondy recounts several instances of active discrimination, but there is no attempt at measuring its breadth or depth or, assuming that it exists at some level, which approach, the silence of Kuromatsu and the JDK or the voice of Takagawa and the BLL, can address it more effectively. These issues are understandably beyond the purview of this book, but the very success of Bondy’s narrative not only makes Voice, Silence, and Self required reading for anyone interested in the situation of minorities in Japan, but also makes the reader hope for a sequel, where the next fifteen years of his subjects’ encounters with majority Japan will be recounted.
Frank K. Upham
New York University, New York City, USA
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