The invention of an apparatus on the conception of national consciousness

For the new paradigm of the Buraku problem studies

Abstract

  There were several kinds of discriminated people as social outcasts in the Tokugawa era of Japan. They had arms and combat arm trainings constantly. It was the professional duty for the government and society called “yaku”. This fact means that they were a society of military strength belonged the feudalistic government. They were done subsumption of socially through exercising their power.

  When the Meiji government disarmed the Samurai, it disarmed burakumin in the same way and it got the militaristic power and police system to overthrow of the feudal system. At the same time, all of outcast people who had variety in the area where they lived had been unified into Eta-Hinin. They were soon called Burakumin. They were excluded from the main society, and pushed to the fringe as the inevitability of the industrial revolution prevailed. That was a turning point for Japanese society.

  During the Japanese industrial revolution, the Nation-state fell into economic political crisis after the Russo-Japanese War. The national and local governments adopted a policy called “Burakukaizen-undou” to ride out this crisis and to unite Burakumin who were on the fringe to national. The bureaucrats encouraged the Burakumin to save money, to spread medical knowledge and let them change their names to make amendments of family registration, which was precise and absolute unchangeable.

  This paper will show a method to construct a new paradigm, and propose a mew point of view to read the data of Buraku problem. It will criticize the classical thoughts of the dichotomy between those who discriminate and those who are discriminated against. It will express Japanese modernization and imprinting of power into the physical of Burakumin through aiming at the military dismantling of the Burakumin.