Walking on the Edge: Towards a Sociography of Discrimination against the Buraku: Lectures on Discrimination in Letter Format

This article demonstrates a new methodological approach to recognize, analyze and write about discrimination against the buraku, which is one form of social discrimination in contemporary Japan. The structural discrimination proposed in this study is based on the concept of relational discrimination, which is derived from fundamental criticisms of the conventional concepts of material and psychological discrimination. Relational discrimination occurs when we are placed in a certain type of relationship and may become accomplices to discrimination or cause it, regardless of whether or not there is any individual prejudice or discriminatory consciousness at work. From this perspective, this article tries to fundamentally re-examine the binary thinking assumed in conventional sociology that there are minorities (those who are discriminated against) and majorities (those who discriminate against the minority). I focus on the complex ways of being human, and in particular on the transformations that accompany changes in particular relations such as from a person who does not discriminate to one who discriminates against others; from a person who is discriminated against to one who discriminates against others and from a person who is not discriminated against to one who is discriminated against. By focusing on the meaning of the deep suffering of a man who made discriminatory remarks to people living in a buraku community, and of a woman who married into a family living in a buraku community, I try to understand life ethics for people who discriminate and who at the same time are discriminated against.