The Contribution of Buraku Women to the Liberation Movement:
Between the Personal and the Political.
Seeking Gender Equality, Literacy, and Welfare.
Master Thesis
MA 120 Japan Studies
Chiara Fusari
s2300885
Supervised by:
Aya Ezawa
June 2020
Word Count: 14.875
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Aknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr.Aya Ezawa, for her continuous support even from far away. I am also deeply thankful to Yamamoto Eiko, Shiotani Sachiko and all the other people who accepted to share their stories with me. I am indebted to professor Kurokawa Midori and professor Kumamoto Risa for sharing their knowledge and contacts with me making the interviews possible. Furthermore, I would like to pay my special regards to my advisor at Rikkyo University Iwama Akiko, to professor Christopher Bondy and professor Naoto Saito for their insightful guidance. My deepest gratitude goeas to my dormmates from Rikkyo Global House, all my other friends in Japan and my host family who always encouraged me and believed in me. To conclude, I cannot forget to thank my family and friends back home for all the unconditional support and great love.
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INDEX
INTRODUCTION ... 3
CHAPTER ONE: THE PLACE OF BURAKU WOMEN INSIDE THE BURAKU COMMUNITY ... 8
English literature on burakumin and buraku issues ... 8
Japanese literature on buraku women ... 11
CHAPTER TWO: GENDER ISSUES AND FEMINISM IN JAPAN ... 20
CHAPTER THREE: MORITA, YAMAMOTO AND SHIOTANI, THREE LIVES DEVOTED TO LIBERATION ... 26
Personal background ... 26
Morita Masuko ... 27
Yamamoto Eiko ... 27
Shiotani Sachiko ... 28
Education and literacy ... 29
Gender equality and employment ... 32
Care and welfare ... 35
CONCLUSIONS: FIGHTING GENDER DISCRIMINATION INSIDE THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT ... 39
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INTRODUCTION
Burakumin are one of the largest minorities in Japan. There have been many controversies about their historical origins, about the reasons for the lingering discrimination and about buraku identity. However, there is a missing piece in the many analysis of buraku issues. What about buraku women? What if we apply a gender perspective to these issues? This thesis will focus on the situation, the struggles and activism of buraku women from the after-war period to the beginning of the 21st century. People from the buraku community, despite the widespread improvements of their living conditions in the last decades, are still victims of discrimination in different contexts, mainly employment and marriage. Additionally, Japanese society is still greatly male-dominated, the idea of the gender division of labour is strong, and women are poorly represented in high-ranking managerial positions or in the government. People often fail to see the intersectional aspect of being buraku women. It is not possible to use either buraku discrimination or gender as single analytical lenses; there is the need to apply an intersectional approach as they face difficulties due to both gender and their buraku origins.
There is a modest literature on burakumin in English that covers various issues such as buraku history, living conditions, political movements, and discrimination. For example, the works of Ian Neary (1997), Timothy D. Amos (2011), and Christopher Bondy (2015) are highly valuable resources to get an overall insight into various aspects related to buraku issues. Studies on burakumin gradually diversified and they now tackle issues like identity or the situation of the younger generations. However, there is still no actual material in English, and only a limited amount of literature in Japanese, that deals with gender difference. There is a deficiency of studies that analyse how buraku women might experience discrimination in a different way or how they contributed to the liberation
4 movement. In order to analyse buraku women’s situation, it is important to investigate and understand the changes that the buraku community as a whole underwent in the last seventy years, and this analysis will constitute an important part of this research. However, differently from previous studies, I will make use of a gender-focused approach to understand what were women’s contributions to these changes, and how they affected women.
I intend to examine the experiences and the activism of buraku women from the perspective of intersectionality. According to Patricia Hill Collins’ (2016), intersectionality is how race, class, gender, etc. are interrelated in the way they shape people’s experiences and construct social inequalities. Considering the fact that different factors work together and influence each other, can help to better understand social inequalities and the organization of power (Hill and Bilge, 2016). Intersectionality, therefore, can be considered as an analytic tool, a lens through which it is possible to create a more complete framework to grasp the complexity of buraku women’s condition. Firstly, buraku women are women, so it is not possible to overlook the broader context of gender issues in Japan since context is a major factor in determining people’s behaviours. It is important to analyse and take into consideration alongside gender issues and bias in Japan, also living conditions in buraku communities and all other factors that might influence buraku women’s experience. Intersectionality can be applied to the analysis of various fields such as employment or education. For example, burakumin for a long time experienced harsh discrimination in employment that made it hard to find a stable job. At the same time, in the male-oriented Japanese society, women represent a great percentage of part-time and contract workers, and they are still poorly represented in high managerial positions. Buraku women faced not only the struggles due to their buraku origins, but also the limitations women encounter in the job market. Taking into consideration how these various aspects interact helps understand why buraku women risk to be in a more vulnerable position compared to both buraku men and non-buraku women. The same intersectional approach can be applied to education. In buraku communities, due to poverty and discrimination in the past, there were few people advancing to higher education and there was a high illiteracy rate. In the mainstream society, there is a gender
5 bias in the education system and women are highly represented in two years colleges or humanities. As a result, in the past buraku women, who were from the start more likely to be illiterate, had even fewer chances to go to university. Lower education attainments caused by poverty and discrimination, diminish the chances to find a good stable employment perpetuating the poverty circle. Therefore, other than buraku discrimination and gender issues, also class has to be taken into consideration in this research. Bell Hook (2012) states that class is not a mere question of money, rather it involves behaviours, expectations, way of thinking and so on, therefore since class shapes women’s perception of gender inequality, it is an important variable to take into consideration. Another key concept in this research is empowerment, also called “agency” by the World Bank (2014) that defined it as “the capacity to make decisions about one’s own life and act on them to achieve a desired outcome, free of violence, retribution, or fear.” (The World Bank Group 2014, 1). Education, employment, literacy, welfare, just to name some of the issues buraku women dealt with, are all forms of empowerment for these women to become the “agents” of their lives.
For what concerns gender equality, women’s situation and feminism in Japan, Vera Mackie (2003) and Emiko Ochiai (2005 and 2020) both give useful insights. They investigate the struggles and the achievements of Japanese feminists, as well as women’s situation concerning, for example, education or employment. Furthermore, they analyse how social structures, such as family and employment system, shape women’s experiences and how these social factors changed over time. Japanese feminism is referred to as a middle-class oriented movement. There seems to be a lack of diversity and consequently a lack of visibility of women in more vulnerable positions. Privileged, well-educated women became the main focus of the feminist movement, overshadowing problems faced by other groups of women. Understanding buraku women’s situation can help shed some light on these less represented issues while analysing their struggles and contributions to gender equality help us gain a broader understanding of women’s condition and gender issues in Japan.
What kind of contributions, despite being kept on the margins, did they give to both buraku liberation and women liberation? Buraku women were not given a proper place in the main literature
6 on buraku issues and they were not able to find a place in the feminist movement either, so how did they manage to get their voices heard? Because of the many limitations due to poverty, discrimination or illiteracy they had to find alternative strategies to fight and empower themselves. Sharing various women’s experiences not only will allow me to show these strategies and how did they engage in the movement, but it represents a chance for their stories to be heard and known. Telling their life stories and contextualising them in the broader historical and social setting, I will explore what were the main problems buraku women had to face in postwar Japan and how these issues changed over time. What were the causes of these changes and what role did buraku women activists play in achieving these improvements? In order to analyse their life stories, it is not possible to adopt a monodimensional angle such as genders studies, but there is the necessity to look from various angles and to different dimensions to understand how they interacted in shaping these women’s experiences, which is why it is important to take an intersectional approach. Furthermore, I intend to investigate how and why the problems and issues faced by buraku women were different from those of their male counterparts and from those of non-buraku women. Gender bias and issues are not alien to the buraku community and the Buraku Liberation League, therefore it is also relevant to understand how women activists interacted with the Liberation Movement. Why was it necessary to create a women’s department inside the Buraku Liberation League and what is its role? How did women activists dealt with gender discrimination inside the movement itself? Intersectionality allows shedding light on how the problems and issues these women faced were determined by a multitude of factors such as gender, class, buraku discrimination etc that are interconnected. It is significant to try understanding in which ways did all these factors influenced and how they engaged in activism inside the movement.
In order to answer these questions, since there is a lack of academic studies and literature specifically about buraku women, I intend to use life stories and testimonies of various buraku women, they are all from different regions but almost all were born in the first half of the 20th century. I will use both written autobiographical documents, as well as original interviews I conducted with two
7 activists: Yamamoto Eiko and Shiotani Sachiko. Yamamoto lives in Kyoto and she has been deeply involved in the literacy movement. Shiotani lives and operates in Osaka, she is mainly concerned with matters related to employment and care services. Another very influential activist, whose life will be analysed in this research, was Morita Masuko, who, for all her life, has been a very active militant of the liberation movement and she was also deeply involved in politics. These three women, like many others that will be mentioned, have had very different life experiences, are from different regions of Japan and focus on different aspects of buraku discrimination. However, they have one thing in common: there is a deep link between their personal experiences and how they take action. Personal stories are particularly relevant to my analysis because they show how the context in which these women lived and acted influenced their involvement in the liberation movement. At the same time, analyzing these women’s lives can contribute to discover some common or shared difficulties, which would suggest the existence of patterns of discrimination due to the intersectional character of buraku women.
The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter One deals with buraku issues: the first half of the chapter is dedicated to a brief analysis of the existing literature on burakumin in order to create a historical and social context, while the second half concentrates more specifically on the available materials on buraku women. Chapter Two gives an outline of gender issues in Japan, then in Chapter Three I will use as case studies the stories of three women, Yamamoto Eiko, Morita Masuko, and Shiotani Sachiko, to analyse in-depth how they contributed to buraku liberation, as well as women’s liberation. In the last section, I will deal with gender discrimination inside the buraku liberation movement and will present the main conclusions of the research.
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Chapter One: The Place of Buraku Women inside the Buraku
Community
In this chapter, I will first analyse the available literature in English on buraku issues to give an overall understanding of the historical background of buraku discrimination and of how buraku issues changed over time. From the post-war period, a diverse body of works have been written in English about burakumin and buraku related issues. Most studies focus on history, politics, specific areas of discrimination and on possible future solutions for the remaining anti-buraku discrimination. Although some researches mentioned the difference between wealthy and poor burakumin, or between older and younger generations, there is a general lack of attention to the heterogeneity among the burakumin community. The English literature on burakumin is not particularly broad but how does it examine gender? How is the discourse on the historical origins of burakumin gendered? There is no actual material other than in Japanese that deals with gender differences among burakumin, and analyses how women might experience discrimination differently or how they deal with their buraku identity. Even when testimonies of women are reported, they are not taken into consideration using gender as an analytical tool. Therefore, the second part of the chapter will focus on the literature in Japanese specifically about buraku women with the aim to try understanding: what are the specific
situation and problems concerning buraku women? How can they be examined in the wider narrative of buraku history and buraku issues?
English literature on burakumin and buraku issues
Burakumin, which literally means ‘people from the hamlet’, is one of the largest minority groups in Japan, but, unlike the Zainichi Koreans or the Ainu, they are an invisible minority as they are racially and ethnically Japanese (Bondy 2015, 15). Many theories have been elaborated concerning their historical origins, like the ‘middle-age social origin’ (Neary 2003, 275-6) or the ‘early modern political origin’ theories (2003, 279). The first cultural-anthropological studies in English have been written in
9 the early after-war period and one of the most important was De Vos and Wagatsuma’s book entitled “Japan’s Invisible Race” (1967). The book has been written before the enforcement of the Law on Special Measures for Dowa Projects (hereinafter Special Measures Law or SML) in 1969, therefore the various ethnographic researches integrated in the volume give a glimpse of the harsh living conditions in buraku districts at the time and depict a rather negative image of burakumin.
From the 1970s to the early 2000s, Neary (1997), Reber (1998 and 1999), Devis Jr. (2000), Degawa (2001) and many others conducted studies with a new focal point: the changes and improvements of the material living conditions in buraku communities achieved thanks to the government’s founding under SML. Moreover, there is considerable attention to the rise and evolution of political movements for buraku liberation. The liberation movement officially started with the foundation on March 3, 1922 of the Suiheisha (National Leveler’s Association) which was then disbanded during the Second World War (Devis Jr. 2000, 114). Right after the end of the conflict activists got together once again establishing the Buraku Liberation League (hereinafter BLL). There are also other organizations that take different approaches to the issue and the debate on which strategy is more effective is not completely extinguished yet.
Great attention has been dedicated to the educational progress of buraku children since the rate of youngster dropping out of school and doing very poorly in their studies was worryingly high before the creation of the so-called Dowa education (De Vos and Wagatsuma 1967, 259-264). As both Davis Jr. (2000) and Reber (1999) pointed out, since the beginning of the distribution of government aids there has been a striking increase in students who advanced to secondary education. Despite the undeniable and remarkable improvements achieved in the last fifty years, the number of buraku students who continue their education to college or university is still low compared to the national average (McLauchlan 2003, 43). Since the beginning, the liberation movement has given extreme importance to education because, as the slogan of Dowa education says, “Buraku liberation begins and ends in education” (2003, 39). The combination of poverty and low education is the cause a vicious circle: poor families do not have the means to send their children to school; once they become adults
10 these children are not able to find a well-paid job because of their lack of education so their sons and daughters are destined to follow the same path, and so on (Davis Jr 2000, 116). It is important to stress the fact that education is a strongly gendered topic. There have been many changes, but in the past generally girls and boys were not given the same chances to study and get to higher education, and it was especially true for poor families. What about buraku girls? How did the enforcement of the SML benefit them? How did the end of the government's funding affect them? How did the widespread idea of the male as the breadwinner influence the choices of families when investing on their sons and daughters’ education?
After the end of the SML in 2002, many people began to think that, since the material conditions of buraku communities were no longer matter of worry, buraku issues as a whole were solved (Amos 2011, 161). Because of the undeniable improvement of living conditions in buraku communites, there was a gradual shift in the focus of studies about buraku related issues as a lot of publication started to deal more with the ‘soft’ side of anti-buraku discrimination and with what being a burakumin really means. Two of the main authors preoccupied with such issues are Amos (2011) and Bondy (2015), who tackled the insidious matter of buraku identity. The starting point of their analysis is the fact that identities are socially constructed and they are continually shifting according to the changes in the social, political and cultural background. Amos (2011) points out that the master narrative about buraku is fundamentally built on questionable basis; in fact, there are prominent proofs that the simplistic theory of continuity that directly links the premodern outcasts to modern burakumin, is rather fragile (2011, 53). Buraku issues, therefore, are not just a historical form of discrimination based on family lineage, residence or occupation and grounded in ancient stereotypes, as many may think. It is intimately connected to “the ways in which the burakumin (and ‘non-burakumin’) narrate their experiences in the present and the kinds of identities they assume for purpose of achieving future liberation from discrimination” (2011, 14-5). Bondy (2015) as well stresses the fact that people decide how to present themselves depending, for example, on past experiences, on present understanding of the broader social environment and on expectations for future interactions (2015, 123). Finally,
11 both Amos and Bondy argue that buraku discrimination cannot be thought merely as something belonging to the past, but rather that it is a problem rooted in the very structure of Japanese society. It can be considered as the result of the widespread difficulty to accept the desirability of an identity other than the hegemonic mainstream one. Activists that do not aim to assimilation assert that people from the buraku community should be free to claim whatever identity they feel belongs to them, without fearing discrimination.
Japanese literature on buraku women
The brief account given in this chapter about literature on burakumin shows how various topics like history, politics, specific areas of discrimination (education, marriage or employment), and possible future solutions for the remaining anti-buraku discrimination, have been widely analysed. What about buraku women and gender issues inside the buraku community? There is barely any account on the topic in English; therefore, hereafter I will explore the accessible literature in Japanese.
The literature specifically about buraku women can be divided into two main categories: biographical works and surveys’ results, namely, qualitative and quantitative data. Both categories are fundamental to have a full understanding of buraku women’s situation. It is also important to question
why the literature on buraku women is mainly limited to personal stories and it is not part of the general discourse on burakumin. Why the only way buraku women found to make their voice heard was biographical accounts? A fundamental factor to take into consideration is the impact of illiteracy
and low educational level, which made it difficult for many buraku women to access academic writing. Biographical narrations are of great importance in this context because they show aspects of the buraku community and of buraku issues that are marginalized in the mainstream literature on the topic. Narrating their personal experiences, these women were able to convey their worries, their
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biographical element of their testimonies does not make them less objectives or reliable, on the contrary, they give a different perspective on buraku issues. For example, it allows us to have a better
understanding of gender inequality and bias inside the community or the movement. It is important to stress that there is a significant diversity inside the buraku community in general, and therefore also among buraku women. Pieces of evidence of this diversity can be seen both in the personal stories
of the many women who shared their experiences with the world, both in the fact that most of the available data concerning buraku women are from local surveys. Despite the variety of experiences and living conditions, there are still common elements to all buraku women; some of these common features are due to belonging to the buraku community, some to the fact of being women. Thus,
analysing the available literature on buraku women is essential to have a good understanding of their living situation, of the problems and hardships they faced, of how they overcame them, and of how they engaged in the liberation movement. The aim of this research is to outline the role played by
women in the liberation movement and their contribution to the promotion of gender equality, and to do so the focus will be on the personal stories of activists. As Kawaguchi Emi noticed, many people in various ways have already talked about buraku discrimination and buraku history, however, the story has always been told by men (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo, 1991, 48). Therefore, all women who
decided to share their stories with the world recognized the need and the importance of letting women’s voices heard. A significant part of the testimonies is from members of the BLL and the Buraku Shuppansha, the official publishing house of the liberation movement, has published them. There is a
lack of studies and analysis from an outside point of view and most importantly there is barely any translation or research in English.
Hereafter I will introduce and analyse what I believe are the most relevant collections of buraku women’s personal stories to highlight some of the main issues they faced. One significant collection is
“Buraku he no Hokori wo Mune ni – Josei toshite, Haha toshite”. The aim of the collection, according to the curator, is to share with all the people involved in the liberation movement, especially new generations, the stories of the women that, in the post-war, not only supported the liberation
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movement but also took care of their families and educated their children. Women who despite the many struggles and hardships learned to be proud of their buraku origins (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo,
1991). All the ten women who took part in the collection were born before the Second World War, mainly in the 1920s, with the exception of one of them who was born in 1945 (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1991, 169). Thus, most of them became active in the liberation movement in the after-war and took
part in the most militant period of the BLL. A strong point of biographical narratives is that most women are frank and open in telling not only the merits and achievements of the liberation movement but also the gender bias inside the movement itself. For example, some women opened up about internalized discrimination concerning the fact that women do not need to study and get to higher
education (1991, 21). Others, such as Tanaka Fuda who was active in the prefecture of Fukuoka, talks about how in the early years of the BLL when the women’s department had just been created, women were mostly seen as personnel to mobilize in case of need to support their male counterparts (1991,
157). Moreover, she also vented about the lack of understanding of women’s rights inside the community and the movement, and how, face some of the proposals made by women, male activists would sometimes oppose referring to these requests as “shameful”. There was the idea that women’s problems should have been solved among women and that private matters such as maternity and
childcare should be kept private (1991, 163). These examples show how, especially in the after-war period when there was very low awareness about women’s rights in general, buraku women had to fight not only buraku discrimination from ‘outside’ the community but also gender discrimination from
inside.
The book’s title could be translated in English as “The pride of being buraku as women and as mothers”. One thing that stands out throughout the whole collection is the importance of the role of women as mothers. This appears to be a common thread in most of the stories as several women
stated that the main motivation that brought them to get involved in the movement was the desire to build a better society for their children so that they would not have to go through the same hardships. Some women personally experienced marriage discrimination, some others only heard
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about it from people around them, but all of them had the same thought: “what if the same thing happened to my daughter or son?” Especially women with daughters were very concerned about it
since, as Kawamoto Ryūko said, at the time the value of a woman was still greatly based on her being able to marry and to become a good wife and mother (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1991, 84). Some women from the collection said that they did not personally experience discrimination, but listening to other
people's stories, they became aware of it. Takatori Ichi said that at the beginning she was quite hostile towards the liberation movement because her husband was attending actively, meaning that he was frequently absent and that all the work in the household fell on her (1991, 133). This testimony shows not only the imbalance of the gender division of work inside the household and the lack of awareness
of women’s problems, but it can also be an index of the lack of appeal of the liberation movement for some women who perceived it more like a nuisance than something that might benefit them. However, when she attended the National Women meeting in 1964, for the first time she had the
chance to hear directly the stories of many women who faced discrimination in marriage or employment. Since then she started to see discrimination everywhere in her daily life. She used to think that the problem was poverty and lack of education, but she came to realize that it was not possible to reduce all discrimination only to that (1991, 133). These stories show the importance of
education and of sharing informations to create a stronger sense of community and raise awareness.
Many buraku women expressed the need to expand the fight for women’s rights and for equality to every woman, to go beyond the buraku community. Ueno Akiyo talked about how she tried
to educate also women from outside the buraku about discrimination, using their shared experiences as women like a bonding agent (1991, 23). One of the shared experiences she mentioned was not having been able to attend school at a young age. In fact, illiteracy among women was a big problem in the after-war period, not only for the buraku community. This problem is reflected also in the fact
that almost every story from the collection mentioned the existence of a literacy class or a study group in the local BLL branch. Kawaguchi Emi, who was active in the Nara prefecture, made an important point: literacy is one of the foundations of the liberation movement as it is a fundamental tool to think
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and learn about human rights (1991, 69). From this collection, emerged many relevant points, first of all, the fact that despite many regional differences there are some core concerns, features, and
problems shared by the majority of buraku women. As Kawaguchi noticed, the main concern for most buraku households in the 70s was childcare and welfare in general (1991, 190) and the life stories of these ten women show the importance of factors, such as education and motherhood, in creating a
sense of solidarity among women.
There are also collections of stories that are not only compilations of biographical accounts, but they put buraku women’s stories in a historical and sociological perspective. For instance, the book “Buraku Josei no Kurashi – Josei Kaihō he no Michi” (2004) was published by the Human Right Centre
of Wakayama with the aim to disclose the path created and walked by buraku women in the wider context of women’s history (Yamazaki and Takashima, 2004). In fact, stories of various buraku women from Wakayama are contextualized in Japanese, as well as global history of women. This kind of narration is important to be able to look at buraku women’s experiences from different angles. The
book analyses how the conditions of women changed according to the transformations of Japanese society and economics since the beginning of the 20th century. The historical narration is interspersed with testimonies from buraku women about how was their life in that specific period and how the
changes of the overall society influenced their situations. The main problems addressed in the book are the poor housing conditions of the buraku before the enactment of the SML, inequalities in education, the importance of the literacy movement and how it changed many women’s life
empowering them.
“Uta de Inochi wo Tsumuide” is a book that tells buraku women’s stories with a very original approach. The author, Tada Emiko (2004) found out about buraku women following her passion for music and she got curious about old traditional songs that remained alive in buraku communities. The
target of her research are buraku obaachan (old ladies) who were born in the early 20th century. She analysed their experiences using music as a leitmotif and she put their personal stories in the wider
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historical context to understand why certain musical traditions remained alive for longer in buraku communities. The peculiar angle from which the author analyses these women’s life stories gives a
new understanding of buraku women’s conditions in the post-war period. For example, she talked about the fact that in the past in schools western music was taught and promoted at the expense of traditional music, however, since most buraku girls at the time did not attend school, they kept singing
traditional songs (Tada 2000, 24). Furthermore, in many buraku districts, the custom of sending young girls as servants to someone’s house to look after the children remained in practice for longer than in mainstream society. Due to buraku discrimination, girls from the community would not be employed in factories and there was no work for the adults either, so this practice was a way to have one less
person to feed at home and to have at least one income in the family (2000, 56). This examples clearly show how different factors such as poverty, buraku and gender discrimination are interrelated in shaping these women’s experiences and that is why there is the need for an intersectional approach.
Finally, there is “Buraku no 21 Kazoku – Raifusutori kara Miru Seikatsu no Henka to Kadai”
(2001), a book which, through the life stories of four Buraku families from Kansai, talks about various aspects of the buraku community. There is a chapter dedicated to gender issues in which professor Kamihara Fumiko (2001) discusses what impact gender and family structure inside the community
have on women and how it is different from the situation of non-buraku women. One of the main aspects she considers is the persevering, deep-rooted ie consciousness, and concept of yome (bride) who is supposed to be “given” to the husband’s family (Kamihara 2001, 414). She discussed how in
the past these customs and ways of thinking had a strong influence on child-raising. Mothers would be very strict in raising their daughter so that they would learn to endure hardness and they would not be an embarrassment or worry the day they would go to their husband’s house as brides. On the other hand, it was normal for sons to stay close to their mothers and growing up in an environment in
which women would do all the work in the house they internalized a certain idea of what was women’s role (2001, 414). One of the consequences of this gendered child-rearing was the overall lower educational level of women since girls’ education compares to boys’ was seen as less important and
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needed (2001, 427). Furthermore, she investigates how women and men face marriage discrimination in slightly different ways and the absence for buraku woman of the “m-shaped” working life pattern
typical of Japanese women. These books, despite using different perspectives, give a great contribution to analysing the condition of buraku women in the context of the family system, both as daughters and as mothers. In addition, they show how changes in Japanese society and economy
affected buraku communities. Finally, they highlighting how some customs and practices remained deep-rooted in the buraku community for longer. These collections of biographical accounts give us a glimpse of the lives of various buraku women and show us not only their fights as activists denouncing gender inequality or the need for education, but also the importance of their role as mothers and as
members of the community who worry for the future of their children.
Buraku women have been involved in the liberation movement since the beginning, but only in 1956 the BLL created the women’s division. Since then, the division held once a year a national meeting to allow women from different regions to share their experiences, to discuss the various
problems they are facing and to find joined solutions (Kumamoto 2015, 22). Knowing the main concerns of the women’s division and its position inside the BLL can help understand how gender awareness in the movement evolved and how buraku women contributed to the liberation
movement. Kumamoto Risa analysed the reports of the buraku women’s division national meeting form the 1950s to the 1980s, in order to show how women’s problem and requests were dealt with in the BLL, how did women’s awareness of their position and of their rights changed, and what were
the main initiatives they engaged in. Originally, the women’s division had been created because the BLL committee recognized the need and importance to give buraku women “guidance”, to provide them with learning opportunities, and to increase their participation in the movement (Kumamoto 2015, 22). Initially, the women’s department was instituted as a sort of a tool for the movement’s
central headquarter to give women directives to follow and implement. However, women soon started to accuse the BLL to consider them only as “means of use” to mobilize as they pleased and they lamented the absence of women at the headquarter (2015, 27). According to Kumamoto, one of
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the main features of these first years was the BLL emphasizing the difference between the Buraku Women Assembly from other women’s groups in order to “keep” buraku women close to plans and
policies of the BLL (2016, 37). The main characteristics of the Buraku women’s movement in the 1970s were a gradual raise of awareness of gender discrimination inside the BLL, the increase of political campaigns focusing on demands for women’s rights, and the encounter with international human
rights standards (2016, 56). In the 1980s the influence of domestic and international trends concerning women’s rights increased, especially the International Women’s Year in 1975 and the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (hereafter CEDW) served as an impulse for buraku women to recognize and demand their rights. These international movements
became a source of empowerment and education for buraku women (2016, 62). If in the 1970s the main concern for buraku women was job security, the focus in the 80s shifted to maternity security and women labour’s rights. The analysis of the development of the buraku women’s movement gives
meaningful insights on the problem faced by buraku women, on how they approached them and on how this approach changed because of a growing awareness of women's rights and increasing interaction with various women's movement. It also shows the lack of women in the headquarter of the BLL that made the leadership gendered. Finally, it sheds light on the complex position of buraku
women both inside the buraku liberation movement itself, both inside the feminist movement.
This chapter, exploring the literature in English about burakumin, showed the lack of analysis of diversity inside the buraku community in general and, especially, the lack of gender perspective.
Summarizing the available materials in Japanese about buraku women, it became clear that they do not only face buraku discrimination, but also gender discrimination both on a wider social scale, both inside the buraku liberation movement itself. Buraku women activists have been calling out the gender bias inside the BLL since the creation of the women’s department. It is possible to identify some core
aspects and issues that concerned women’s activism and initiatives: education and literacy, maternity and childcare, employment and workers’ rights. These elements share the characteristic of being issues that are not important only for buraku women but for all women. Hence, it is possible to say
19
that the aim of buraku women activists was to improve the situation, not only of buraku women but also of all women in general. Shared experience like motherhood, childcare and lack of education
made campaigns carried out by buraku women more open toward outside the limited frame of the buraku community. The next chapter will explore more in-depth the Japanese family system, gender issues and the history of the feminist movement in Japan in order to have a better understanding of
20
Chapter Two: Gender Issues and Feminism in Japan
In the previous chapters, I talked about buraku issues in general and about the conditions of buraku women. However, buraku women’s activism cannot be taken into consideration only from the point of view of buraku liberation. Buraku women live in the wider context of Japanese society therefore their lives are influenced by gender norms and bias embedded in it. Therefore, in this chapter, I will analyse gender issues in Japan with a focus on family, education and employment, as well as the feminist movement. I will also try to include the insights obtained from the experiences and life stories of buraku women presented in the previous chapter into this broader context.
Despite the recent social and economical changes, Japanese society is still male-oriented and the role of women is still strongly linked to the idea of caregivers. An important concept, when talking about the family system in the Japanese context, is ie, a word that denotes both the physical house and the stem family dominated by patriarchy. Why is it relevant? Family is an important source of gender socialization and it plays a fundamental role in preserving and perpetuating gender differentiations; therefore, it is fundamental to understand how women’s role has been shaped by the family structure and by social norms. Although many refer to the ie system as the traditional Japanese family system, it came into place only during the Meiji period (1868–1912), during the modern era. At the time, the ie system was embedded in the legal system but the new Civil Code enacted in 1947 declared its formal dismantlement and the equality of all family members. Despite the gradual shift from the stem family to the nuclear family, various researches argued that in reality, the ideological aspects of the ie system persisted over time (Allison and Ronald 2011, 1). Alongside ie, also the concept of “good wife and wise mother” (ryōsai-kenbo), which might be considered as a traditional value, is also actually a construct of modernity and for a long time, it defined the role of women inside the society. According to Ochiai (2020), this process can be called “traditionalisation of modernity” (Ochiai 2020, 19). The rise of the postwar family system was parallel to the advent of the
21 economic growth and to the development of an affluent society. Its main features were: few children and members bounded together by familial love, the value of privacy, and the sexual division of labour (Ochai 2015, 5). In the postwar era, there has been a process of “housewification of women”, therefore until the 1960s it was a normal pattern for unmarried young girls to work in factories or as office ladies, and for married women to stay home and take care of the family.
The Japanese welfare system sees the family as the one that should hold the burden of care for children, elderly people, and disabled people (2015, 32). “Japanese-style welfare society” was established in the latter half of the 1970s and it emphasizes “traditional’ Japanese virtues of self-help and mutual support within the family and the community”. However, it proved to be a rather anachronistic familial reform, which reinforced the growing trend among women of finding mainly part-time employment (Ochiai 2020, 29). In the modern period, the rise of the ie system contributed to the establishment of standard male breadwinner families. This idea, in the period of the great economic growth, got even stronger with the creation of an employment system that made housewife “the archetypal figure of womanhood” and salaryman “the archetypal figure of masculinity” (Makie 2003, 123). A shortage of workforce in the 1970s, especially after the oil crisis in 1973, pushed married women to re-enter the job market after the end of the child-rearing period, creating the typical M shape curve of Japanese women’s work-life (Ochiai 2015, 19). Because of some employment practices that acted as promoters of full-time male employers and “helped consolidate standard nuclear families and life-courses” (Alexy and Richard 2011, 8), most women became part-time or irregular workers meaning that their salary was importantly lower than full-time male workers. Thus, the male breadwinner ideology was not undermined. The rise of the archetypical gender role of salaryman and housewife was possible because of the benefits of the economic growth that allowed men to sustain their families only by their salary. On the other side of the coin, as an almost natural outcome of men’s long working hours, women became the ones in charge of housework and childcare. However, as we have seen in the previous chapters, many people from buraku communities did not enjoy the same way the benefits of the economic growth as buraku discrimination prevented many of them to find a
22 stable job. Consequently, the figure of the salarymen did not become as widespread as in the mainstream society, many men were not able to sustain their families alone and most buraku women kept working even after marriage and childbirth, be it inside or outside the house. Despite the high percentage of buraku women in the workforce this did not translate in a more equal division of housework chores or childcare, doubling women’s burden.
Even when gender discrimination in employment was declared illegal by the Equal Employment Opportunities Law (EEOL) in 1986, many companies to elude the new legislation, created a two-path employment system: a ‘managerial’ one and a ‘clerical’ one. Under this new system until the late 90s, males were automatically employed under the managerial track, while the majority of women were relegated to the clerical one, which did not offer benefits, chances of promotion, or advancement of career. Although the situation has slowly changed in the 21st century, because of these employment practices still nowadays in Japan there is only a small number of women in senior management positions. This is one of the factors that contributed to the low position of Japan in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap report, in which it was only the 121th of 153 countries (World Economic Forum, 2019).
Another element that shaped the life-course of women was the strong link between the educational and employment system. Briton (1994) argued that there is a tight linkage between male students entering prestigious universities and them finding stable employment in a large firm or in the government bureaucracy. Therefore “it does not make sense for Japanese parents to ‘invest’ in daughters the way they invest in sons” (1994, 198). As a consequence, women, especially until the early 2000s, were disproportionately represented in two-years colleges that usually offered curricula focused on humanities and social science. Many families did no perceive university education as helpful for their daughters neither to enter the market labour, neither for the “marriage market” because it was believed that for highly educated women it would be more difficult to find a husband (1994, 210). Women from wealthy families were the one most likely to get to top universities and, consequently, to be able to reach managerial positions. It can be said that the education and
23 employment system not only created a ‘glass ceiling’ for women but they also promoted “the widening class gap among women or the polarisation of elite women and women en masse”(Ueno 2020, 82). As Kamihara (2001) argued, in the buraku community the deeprooted ie consciousness contributed to make childrearing quite gendered and caused buraku women to have an overall lower education level. Likewise, in the past also in mainstream society there was a consistent gap between men and women educational level, the situation in the buraku communities was worse because of the buraku discrimination and poverty. Scholarships and support provided by the SML from the 1970s played a fundamental role in promoting the advancement of buraku youngster, and especially buraku girls, to higher education. Despite the consistent improvements of the situation in the last decades, buraku women for a long time have been negatively affected both by gender bias inside the education system and by the effects of buraku discrimination.
Another factor that lead to the establishment and maintenance of privileges of the male breadwinner family system was the social security system created after the Second World War. The system mainly focused on the social risks faced by male workers who were heads of households. Therefore, according to Tamiya (2020), “it protected households consisting of male breadwinners who enjoyed regular employment, seniority wages, and lifetime employment, with women as a homemaker and their children” (2020, 254). As a result of a discriminatory employment and social security system and the lack of support from labour unions, a significant part of the working women population does not enjoy the same benefits and earning as male workers. In various aspects of their life, women are still influenced by patriarchal family system and paternalistic corporate structure. Consequently, especially those from more vulnerable groups such as single mothers or minority women, are more at risk of poverty. Women, in Japan, are still struggling to achieve gender equality, not only in employment but also in society as a whole.
Japanese feminism, in continuation with the tendency of the prewar feminist movement, was rather maternalistic also in the after-war period (Ueno 2020, 79). Things started to slowly change in
24 the 1970s when there was a shift in the Feminist Movement as some women started to become disillusioned with earlier forms of activism. They started to question why did women have to be considered only as mothers and wives (Makie 2003, 175). A big influence on the development of the feminist movement had the International Women’s Year in 1975, which worked as a boost for various feminist activities. In particular, many women’s groups got together to pressured the government to ratify The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. Japan ratifies the UN convention in 1985 after the bureaucracy worked to meet the requirements and commitments made under the CEDAW.
The feminist movement reflected the family and employment system. Becoming a fulltime housewife was seen as the “status symbol” of the middle-class family, and housewives were the ones who, having more time, were more actives in women’s groups. This is why until the 1980s feminism in Japan was often called “housewife feminism” (Ueno 2020, 80). As illustrated before, after the oil shock in 1973 the rate of working women, mainly middle-aged and old married women who re-entered the job market as part-timers, was increasing. This trend gradually changed the face of women’s groups and women’s centres, but the Japanese feminist movement remained mainly a middle-class homogenous movement. Consequently, buraku women who in many cases did not have the privilege to become housewives or to be considered part of the middle-class, were marginalized inside the feminist movement and were closer of women’s departments of labour movements because they had similar interests and goals.
It is possible to identify three main characteristics of the Japanese feminist movement: a high concentration of non-working women, focus on welfare activities and the fact that most activities “have been carried out by private volunteer organizations dependent on subscriptions and donations” (Makie 2003, 208). Ueno (2020) noticed that: “the grassroots women’s activism was limited to lifelong education among non-working women at local women’s centres, and labour issues were hardly problematized among them” (2020, 83). Working women, who often were too busy to join the activities, found themselves in a rather weak position. They did not find a space inside the feminist
25 movement and at the same time labour unions, that generally focused solely on full-time permanent employees (Makie 2003, 182), did not pay attention to their needs and demands. Buraku women as well, in line with the tendency of other feminist groups, gave great importance to welfare activities and life-long education, but they also put a stronger focus on employment related issues.
As we saw in Chapter One, because of the overall poor living conditions of most buraku communities, buraku women’s life course generally did not follow the typical M-shaped curve. Buraku discrimination, poverty, and gender bias in the education and employment system resulted in general lower education attainments and worse working conditions compared to non-buraku women. Consequently, Buraku women’s voices and concerns have been marginalized in the mainstream feminist movement’s discourse that was more focused on middle-class women and housewives. Hence, it is necessary to go back to buraku women’s personal stories to better understand the main issues they faced. The next chapter will explore the experiences of three activists who dedicated their lives to buraku and women’s liberation: Yamamoto Eiko, Shiotani Sachiko and Morita Masuko. What ways did they find, despite all the adversities, to become activists? How did they fight against discrimination and how did they struggle to empower themselves?
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Chapter Three: Morita, Yamamoto and Shiotani, Three Lives
Devoted to Liberation
In this chapter, I will use the life stories of three buraku women, Yamamoto Eiko, Morita Masuko and Shiotani Sachiko, who have been particularly active inside the liberation movement, and who were particularly concerned about women’s conditions and fought for women's rights. Alongside with books, articles or other sources written by the three women, this chapter is based on the interviews I conducted with Yamamoto and Shiotani. The aim of the chapter is, first, to better understand the intersectional nature of buraku women’s activism, and to give examples of the main initiatives and struggles they engaged in. I will not only focus on their activism but also on their personal life to show how it influenced their engagement in the movement.
Personal Background
First, I will shortly talk about these women’s background as a way to place them historically and geographically. Why is it necessary? How I already stated before, context plays a crucial part in shaping people’s actions and experiences. As Yamamoto (2012) argued, the environment in which people grow has a big influence on them, for example in the past it was normal for buraku children not to go to school because people around them would not go either (2012, 208). These three women are all from various places, had very different childhood and encountered the liberation movement differently. However, their experiences have a main common point: their life stories shaped their activism.
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Morita Masuko
Morita Masuko, the eldest of the three, was born in 1924 and lived all her life in Kochi, where she passed away in 2016. She was very active in the political life of the city as she had been elected in the city council four times in a row and in the prefectural council twice. Her father was an activist both in the labour and liberation movement so she followed his footsteps becoming an activist at a young age. Differently from him, however, she was deeply concerned about the women’s situation (Morita 1992). She was the only one, out the three women, who had a parent who already was an activist and who, therefore, grew up in a progressive and stimulant environment.
Yamamoto Eiko
Yamamoto Eiko was born in 1931 in Kyoto where she still lives nowadays. She grew up with her grandmother and she discovered her buraku origins when she entered elementary school. She got close to the liberation movement at a young age because she felt that people from the BLL were the first ones to offer her answers to the many questions and doubts she had since she was a child: “Why are people around me poor? Why teachers treat us so badly at school? Why so many adults in the district are not working during the day?” At first, people told her not to go because the people from the liberation movement had a reputation of being violent and scary, but she went to the community centre to listen to the BLL representatives anyway because she needed answers. Thanks to them, for example, she found out that the reason why so many buraku people did not have a job and were poor was buraku discrimination and illiteracy. Yamamoto, however, did not live all her life in the buraku. For about ten years, until her son got married, she lived outside the buraku and in the interview, she insisted on the importance of this experience:
It was inspiring being able to see the buraku from the outside and see how life was outside of it, it allowed me to notice the things that needed to change in the district. Living outside
28 the buraku gave me a more objective perspective on the living conditions in the community and on the activities of the liberation movement.
Yamamoto, despite attending elementary school, was illiterate and knowing the many hardships and limits due to that condition she started a literacy class. Throughout her whole life she has been very active in the context of the literacy movement.
Shiotani Sachiko
Shiotani Sachiko was born in 1945 in a buraku district in Osaka characterised by a thriving meat industry and her parents, as well, used to have a meat shop. She first knew about her buraku origins once she started to go to elementary school. After a discriminatory comment from a classmate, her parents advised her not to tell people where she was from and eventually the family moved out of the buraku when she was in 6th grade. She grew up hiding her buraku origin and she used to dislike people from the BLL because she thought that, since they kept talking about buraku discrimination, the issue was not going away. However, when she experienced marriage discrimination first hand, she decided to move back into the buraku. After the birth of her daughter, she actively joined the liberation movement to build a better future so that her child would not have to experience the same difficulties and problems (Mainichi Shimbun, 2016). She got involved in many initiatives dealing with education and employment issues, as well as problem linked to childcare and maternity.
Morita and Yamamoto were both born before the war so not only they experienced life in the prewar period when living conditions in the buraku were still utterly poor, but they also lived through the war, they started to work in factories at a very young age and they had to face the hardships of the immediate after-war period. Shiotani was born right after the end of the war so when she got to the schooling age compulsory education in Japan was already extended to middle school (Brinton 1994, 192), therefore she received a better education compared to the two older women. In the
pre-29 war period, in fact, only ten per cent of women attended secondary education (Brinton 1994, 190) and the number was even lower in the buraku community where many people did not even get proper primary education. The way they got involved in the activities of the BLL was also different: Morita came from a family of activists while Yamamoto and Shiotani at first were both wary toward the movement but ended up getting close to the BLL to find a chance to improve their lives. No matter how different, all of them described the encounter with the liberation movement as a turning point in their life and stressed the importance of the people they had the chance to meet and work with. The next section will analyse not the differences between these women, but what they have in common. To do so I will explore some fields in which these three women have been particularly active: education, employment, childcare and other welfare-related activities. Why did they engage in these activities?
Education and Literacy
As explained in the previous chapters, one of the greatest issues concerning buraku women was the generally low educational attainment. Due to the combination of the effects of a patriarchal family system and buraku discrimination, many people from older generations did not even complete elementary school and the illiteracy rate in the past was alarmingly high. Inside the buraku, women were those in the weakest position especially concerning education. One of the reasons is that in the buraku, patriarchal conception of gender roles remained strong for a long time and many people would rather invest in their sons’ education rather than in their daughters’ (Shiotani 2007, 105). Morita Masuko experienced first hand this double standard toward girls concerning education. Her father, despite having progressive views and being involved in various social movement, was still old fashioned when talking about gender roles. He did not consider his daughter’s instruction important because sending her to higher education would make her less desirable as a wife. (Morita, 1992) On
30 the other hand, Yamamoto talked about the negative effects of poverty and discrimination on her education. In the interview she recalled hating going to school because of discrimination:
Burakumin were not able to properly attend school because they were poor and since at the time the textbooks were not free, most families could not afford them. I would lend the old books from the neighbours but they were in bad conditions so the teachers would always get angry at me.
She also narrated that:
No matter how hard we would work and study, people would not hire buraku people, and so many people gave up on studying since there was no meaning. Many families would rather send their children to learn a job than send them to school because it represented a better chance to find a job and gain money.
Despite attending the six years of compulsory elementary school, because of poverty and discrimination, growing up she was not able to read and write. She said that “even if I wanted to learn these was nobody around me able to teach me.” These examples show how a combination of gender and buraku discrimination determined the low education attainment of buraku girls. Yamamoto Eiko, out of the three women, is the one more involved in the literacy movement. Among the many activities carried on by the BLL the literacy movement was one of the most important since the illiteracy rate was high, especially among women. When her son got to schooling age, she seriously started to feel the limits and problems due to her illiteracy (Yamamoto 2012, 65). She also noticed that many women around her were facing the same problems and were struggling to support their children. Therefore,
31 in the early 70s, she decided to ask a professor of buraku origins from the local school to teach them how to read and write once a week. She recalled that:
The students were all women from the community, with the addition of a couple of Zainichi Koreans leaving nearby, the classes were very informal and for the first year, they were held in my house. Then we moved to the community centre and the class kept expanding and evolving. It was not only a place where we could learn how to write and read, but it was also an occasion to talk about our worries, our problems or simply our day.
She also stated that:
Men were less interested in learning how to write and read. They would tell me that there was no use in learning since nothing would have changed. But I did not listen to them because for me it was important, and it was also important for our children.
With the passing of time, they also started to held courses to prepare women to take certifications as helpers or cooks so that they could have a chance to find better jobs. In Yamamoto’s words:
The literacy movement was a place of empowerment for buraku women, there they found a community where they did not have to be ashamed of being illiterate, and most importantly it gave them a chance to build a better life, to improve their family living conditions and to break the vicious circle of poverty.
32 Yamamoto Eiko herself took the licence as a cook and she worked as such in local schools for many years. After retiring, she kept studying, she attended evening courses and she completed both middle school and high school. Not satisfied yet, she also enrolled in university at the age of 69. In multiple occasions, she talked about the importance of her family and friends’ support and collaboration, but she also opened up about the critics of many men who could not understand why she was so passionate about education. During all these years, she got more and more involved in the BLL and for a period she was also the Vice President of the women’s department of the Kyoto branch of the BLL and a member of the executive committee of the national women’s division (Yamamoto 2012, 214). She became a great advocate of the importance of education because “the liberation movement starts and ends with education” (2012, 90). In the interview, she talked about the impact of literacy on her everyday life since before she was not able to do by herself the most simple things like taking the bus or filling in forms at the city office.
The literacy movement for many years has been one of the pillars of the liberation movement, but recently the number of literacy classes dropped consistently and the student population became more and more diverse. The movement originally bloomed from the necessity to address the illiteracy problem that was affecting the lives of many buraku people. Then it gradually expanded also outside the buraku welcoming many foreigners and other people. As Yamamoto’s story shows, shared experiences and struggles such as motherhood, illiteracy or discrimination, can become sources of empathy and give a fundamental push for the creation of initiatives, like literacy classes, that can benefit the society.
Gender Equality and Employment
Many female activists have been fighting over the years to guarantee women's right to work and gender equality in workplaces. Morita and Shiotani have both been very active on this front. In
33 the after-war, due to the difficulties for poor uneducated buraku people to find stable employment, the main source of income for most buraku households were the jobs offered by the Unemployment Relief Measure (Yamamoto 2012, 14). According to the law, only the person responsible for the family finances was eligible, so Morita Masuko, as many other women, applied saying that her husband had tuberculosis and for a long time she sustained her family thank to the unemployment measures (Morita 1992). Following her father’s footsteps, she joined the union for unemployment measures workers and she got involved in the fight to establish health insurance for day labourers. The Union also managed to obtain in Kochi equal pay for men and women employed thought the unemployment measures (1992). In 1975, in the occasion of the International Women Year the BLL, with other organizations, called for the elimination of the difference between men and women in public assistance and both Morita and Shiotani took part in the campaign. The difference was based on the belief that women's intake of calories was lower than men’s, its elimination was a gradual process and it was completed ten years later in 1985 (1992). Furthermore, according to Shiotani (2007), a great achievement of the women’s division was allowing women to work for the postal service since they could not even take the exam. After they managed to allow women to get employed, the real fight they had to face was creating a convenient and accessible working environment for them since there was no toilet, changing room or whatsoever for women (Shiotani 2007, 79). Employment, due to illiteracy, discrimination and low educational attainment, was a critical issue for the buraku community as a whole; however, activists had to work twice as hard to improve working conditions for buraku women. They had to fight not only against buraku discrimination but also against gender bias in the society as well as in the system.
Another serious problem activists had to face was the average low level of awareness of workers’ rights and of the importance of enrolling in the pension system. Many self-employed people, a lot of whom were women, were not enrolled in the national pension system; hence, there are many elderly people who nowadays need public assistance to live. If the husband has a stable job and he
34 enters the social insurance system, his wife automatically will be insured as well. However, statistically women live longer so in many cases after the passing of their husbands they are left without any social insurance or pension. Moreover, a large number of people in buraku communities use to have and still has an unstable employment, thus there are numerous uninsured women. That is why they put a lot of effort in creating counselling services about the social insurance and pension system (Shiotani 2007, 80). Education about workers’ rights has been one of the main concerns for Shiotani, according to her:
The problem for many burakumin at the time was that they did not know their rights, so one of the important roles of the liberation movement was to inform people about their rights, such as the right to a minimum salary. Doing so, we were able to help people avoiding being exploited by employers who would offer jobs with a pay lower than the established minimum.
Talking with people she realized that one of the main reasons why people from the buraku would not even apply for better jobs was that in order to do that they needed to give their CV and write about their educational level. However, many people did not get to go to higher education and in some cases, they barely finished elementary school. Furthermore, she explained that for many burakumin simple things like commuting, choosing clothes for a job interview etc, were difficult and they had no one to help them since there was almost nobody from older generations with that kind of experience who could teach them. Hence, many buraku were daily workers. Having children and in many cases not being eligible for jobs offered by the Unemployment Relief Measure, for many women, the only option was to engage in side-jobs at home (naishoku), but nobody knew that there was a minimum wage for that fixed by the law. Shiotani explained that women from the union movement informed buraku activists on the matter and then they worked to educate the rest of the community. Since then, she encouraged women to keep their naishoku journal and to claim a rightful pay for their work (Shiotani
