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"Caste Japan History."
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Caste in early modern Japan : Danzaemon and the Edo outcaste order
\"'Caste', a word normally used in relation to the Indian subcontinent, is rarely associated with Japan in contemporary scholarship. This has not always been the case, and the term was often used among earlier generations of scholars, who introduced the Buraku problem to Western audiences. Amos argues that time for reappraisal is well overdue and that a combination of ideas, beliefs, and practices rooted in Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto, and military traditions were brought together from the late 16th Century in ways that influenced the development of institutions and social structures on the Japanese archipelago. These influences brought the social structures closer in form and substance to certain caste formations found in the Indian subcontinent during the same period. Specifically, Amos analyses the evolution of the so-called 'Danzaemon' outcaste order. This order was a 17th century caste configuration produced as a consequence of early modern Tokugawa rulers' decisions to engage in a state-building project rooted in military logic and built on the back of existing manorial and tribal-class arrangements. He further examines the history behind the primary duties expected of outcastes within the Danzaemon order: notably execution and policing, as well as leather procurement and the monopoly on candlewick production. Reinterpreting Japan as a caste society, this book propels us to engage in fuller comparisons of how outcaste communities' histories and challenges have diverged and converged over time and space, and to consider how better to eradicate discrimination based on caste logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Japanese History, Culture and Society\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Working skin
Since the 1980s, arguments for a multicultural Japan have gained considerable currency against an entrenched myth of national homogeneity. Working Skin enters this conversation with an ethnography of Japan's \"Buraku\" people. Touted as Japan's largest minority, the Buraku are stigmatized because of associations with labor considered unclean, such as leather and meat production. That labor, however, is vanishing from Japan: Liberalized markets have sent these jobs overseas, and changes in family and residential record-keeping have made it harder to track connections to these industries. Multiculturalism, as a project of managing difference, comes into ascendancy and relief just as the labor it struggles to represent is disappearing. Working Skin develops this argument by exploring the interconnected work of tanners in Japan, Buraku rights activists and their South Asian allies, as well as cattle ranchers in West Texas, United Nations officials, and international NGO advocates. Moving deftly across these engagements, Joseph Hankins analyzes the global political and economic demands of the labor of multiculturalism. Written in accessible prose, this book speaks to larger theoretical debates in critical anthropology, Asian and cultural studies, and examinations of liberalism and empire, and it will appeal to audiences interested in social movements, stigmatization, and the overlapping circulation of language, politics, and capital.
eBook
Lust, commerce, and corruption
By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed to be approaching a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate would not last forever was far from anyone's mind.
Yet, in that year, an anonymous samurai author completed one of the most detailed critiques of Edo society known today. Writing as Buyo Inshi, \"a retired gentleman of Edo,\" he expresses a profound despair with the state of the realm and with people's behavior and attitudes. He sees decay wherever he turns and believes the world will soon descend into war.
Buyo shows a familiarity with many corners of Edo life that one might not expect in a samurai. He describes the corruption of samurai officials; the suffering of the poor in villages and cities; the operation of brothels; the dealings of blind moneylenders; the selling and buying of temple abbotships; and the dubious strategies townspeople use in the law courts. Perhaps the frankness of his account, which contains a wealth of concrete information about Edo society, made him prefer to remain anonymous.
This volume contains a full translation of Buyo's often-quoted but rarely studied work by a team of specialists on Edo society. Together with extensive annotation of the translation, the volume includes an introduction that situates the text culturally and historically.
eBook
Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan
By examining chanoyu – the custom of consuming matcha tea – in the Meiji period, Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan investigates the interactions between intellectual and cultural legacies of the Tokugawa period and the incoming influences of Western ideas, material cultures and institutions. It explores the construction of Japan’s modern cultural identity, highlighting the development of new social classes, and the transformation of cultural practices and production-consumption networks of the modern era. Taka Oshikri uses a wealth of Japanese source material – including diaries, newspaper, journal articles, maps, exhibition catalogues and official records – to explore the intricate relationships between the practice and practitioners of different social groups such as the old aristocracy, the emerging industrial elite, the local elite and government officials. She argues that the fabrication of a cultural identity during modernisation was influenced by various interest groups, such as the private commercial sector and foreign ambassadors. Although much is written on the practice of chanoyu in the pre-Tokugawa period and present-day Japan, there are few historical studies focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan thus makes a significant contribution to its field, and will be of great value to students and scholars of modern Japanese social and cultural history.
eBook
Intercontinental union of Argentine ants: behavioral relationships among introduced populations in Europe, North America, and Asia
Many invasive ants, including the Argentine ant Linepithema humile, form expansive supercolonies, within which intraspecific aggression is absent. The behavioral relationships among introduced Argentine ant populations at within-country or within-continent scales have been studied previously, but the behavioral relationships among intercontinental populations have not been examined. The present study investigated the levels of aggression among intercontinental Argentine ant populations by transporting live ants from Europe and California to Japan and conducting aggression tests against Japanese populations. Workers from the dominant supercolonies of Europe and California did not show aggressive behavior toward workers from the dominant supercolony of Japan, whereas they fought vigorously against workers from minor supercolonies. The three massive supercolonies, together with Argentine ants from Macaronesia, may be the largest non-aggressive unit formed by a social insect species in which intraspecific aggression exists. Absence or low levels of aggression at transcontinental scale, which may have derived from low genetic variation, may help introduced Argentine ants maintain expansive supercolonies. The lack of aggression implies possible frequent exchanges of individuals among the intercontinental populations mediated by human activities.
Journal Article
\Burakumin\ at the End of History
In Japan, the Burakumin pariahs faced discrimination in the developing job market, in schools, and in marriage, among others, when interacted with the mainstream community. Neary discusses several aspects of this particular discrimination and offers his perceptions as to how this group developed and how its status changed over time.
Journal Article
The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order
During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) severe sanctions against those usually known as kawata (derogatorily labeled eta by others) and those labeled hinin (literally \"nonhuman\") were codified in law and backed by state force. This article, focusing on the city of Edo, traces the political and social processes that led to the creation of an outcaste order in Japan. It argues that even though ideologies of \"pollution\" and \"impurity\" may have played a role in determining who was targeted for discrimination, the production of a system of prejudice and intolerance was chiefly the result of deliberate political and economic policies of the ruling class.
Journal Article
Towards a Comparative Treatment of Religion: Counterhegemonic and Hegemonic State-Clergy Strategies in Religious Hierarchies of the Russian Road—Iran, Japan, and Russia
Bernhart examines the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 in relation to the religious hierarchies in other Russian Road nation-states--Japan and Russia. The role of Islam in the Iranian Revolution is discussed.
Journal Article