NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/culture/japan/12731

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 5.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!robohen
From: [e-mail] (Henry Robertson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Not a Myth at All
Date: 22 Dec 1992 08:02:24 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
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Buraku: Live in mountainous hamlets, or in urban shantytowns; In the Tokyo
area, check the Sanya area near the Asakusa Kannon temple.
Occupations: leather working; butchering; slaughtering; shoe shops;
cattle ranching; prostitution; migrant labor; migrant vending; at-home
assembly of simple items, such as toys.

the word "buraku" means hamlet, and traditionally they were condemned to
lead the rest of their lives there, so consequently the hamlet people.

Burakumin also run vending stands at festivals; traditionally, when they
sold sake, they served the sakazuki-cup on top of the back of their hand,
so the customer would not have to touch his skin.  As of today,
saying "Yottsu" (four) or showing four fingers hiding the thumb, refers
to this group, as it has two layers of meaning: that they walk on four
legs, or that through deformities they only have four fingers, or that
in the course of butchering work they lost a finger, or as a decomissioned
yakuza had to sacrifice his pinky.  Actually, that's four, isn't it.

Not surprisingly, many of them migrated (& still do) to the US.  You can
guess that Japanese who decide to immigrate, do so because they do not
see a future in their country.

Until Perry's black ships arrived, only buraku ever ate beef, the eta food.
The samurai class' demand for leather had to come from somewhere.  So, the
rest of the cow became dinner.  But, setting everyone aghast, Western
gentlemen freely consumed cows.  So, it became a kinky thing for townsmen
to eat, and soon enough even the samurai were doing it, at urban yakiniku
joints.  Consequently, beef-eating became an exotic ritual for the
cosmopolitan, and to this day people still save a lot of their beef-eating
for occasional trips to yakiniku joints.  Until the 19th century,
the Japanese diet was basically lots of rice with a few salted fish &
vegetables.  Then, beef from the etas and exotic salmon from Ainus up north
diversified their cuisine to respectable levels.  Actually, there is
some historical evidence that the burakumin do in fact come from a separate
race of gypsie-like nomads.  In the 11th century, a Japanese scholar
recorded a dictionary entry for the kugutsu people, by Minamoto Shitago:

The kairaishi  [Sino-Japanese pronunciation of kugutsu] have no settled abode
and no fixed residence.  They live a wandering life and shelter in tents made of
felt (or matting); they are very like northern barbarians.
All the men ride horses and use bows and get their livelihood hunting.  Some of
them juggle with two swords and with seven balls; others make wooden dolls
dance, fight, and generally imitate the actions of human beings.  There are
dolls representing dragons and fish, which writhe most realistically.  The men
often deceive the eye, too, with tricks like changing sand and stones into gold
and coins and plants into birds and beasts.
The women are wont to heave sighs, roll their hips, and smile alluring smiles.
They use rouge and white powder, perform songs and lewd music, and thus seek to
fascinate men.  In this they are not restrained by their parents, husbands or
sons-in-law.  They do not hesitate to spend a night of pleasure with travellers
and wayfarers, even though they have only a brief acquaintance with them.  On
account of their attractions, they are given large sums of money.  They possess
embroidered garments, brocaded clothes, and golden hair-ornaments and caskets.
This is true of all of them, without exception.
The kairaishi do not cultivate a single field, nor do they gather a single
mulberry leaf; so they do not come within any official registration.  None of
them belong to the district where they are; all keep to the wandering life, and
know nothing of kings and princes.  Nor do they fear the local governors.  Since
they have no work allotted to them they pass their whole life in pleasure.  At
night they worship Hyakushin [hundred Gods].  They pray for help and happiness
by beating drums, dancing, and making an uproar.
Despite the promise of a theatre worthy of the otherwise extremely literary and
sophisticated world of eleventh-century Japan, the puppet entertainments offered
by the kugutsu,  far from developing with the years, suddenly cease to figure in
the surviving documents.  The name kugutsu  occurs occasionally in legal records
and elsewhere, but without any indication that persons known by that name were
concerned with puppets.  The kugutsu  men, though generally domiciled on some
manor, where they cultivated the land, were exempt from the usual taxes; they
also sometimes engaged in hunting, as in the old days, or hired their services
as laborers.  The women were out-and-out prostitutes--the name kugutsu  came to
mean only "prostitute"--who worked in brothels situated along the principal
thoroughfares.  Some kugutsu  with a lingering fondness for their art may have
privately continued to operate puppets, or may have performed in regions not
covered by existing records, but this remains conjectural.

so, actually i spent a final paper arguing that the art form of bunraku
came from the etas.