Social Cohesion and Alienation: Minorities in the United States and Japan by George De Vos

Author:George De Vos [Vos, George De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, American, Asian American Studies, Social Science, Political Science, World, Asian, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781000311716
Google: rgeiDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 49789357
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Mobility Patterns and Inter-Community Tensions

At the time of our research in the early 1960s, only one other of the various Kyoto communities beside Takagamine was as homogeneously outcaste in composition. Uchihama, near the railway station, represented a more usual pattern. It had numerous shoemakers and shoe stores, but the community also contained a sprinkling of Koreans, a group of in-migrants from Amami-Oshima, and a number of poor day laborers and garbage pickers of non-outcaste origin.

Iwamoto-cho, a newer Buraku community, was even less stable. It was also near the station, but has only 70 percent Burakumin, mostly people who came from Osaka and Kobe during and after the war. It was then a general lower-class slum, rather than a typical Buraku, including some Koreans, some poor Japanese of non-Buraku background, and a mixed marriage group who have married outcaste men or women and comprise a marginal minority group within the minority population itself. The population tended to be more mobile, for as soon as an individual or family became financially better off, they tended to leave.4 Many went back to Osaka if they had family there. They were people who did not accept being classified as outcastes--so much so that they would call people of neighboring Uchihama, a Buraku of long traditions, by the abusive word for outcaste, eta. For their part, the people of Uchihama considered the people within this "new" area as tough, rude, criminal, and largely responsible for the bad image that people have of outcaste communities.

It is true that the people of this new area, although mostly destitute, were heavy drinkers of shochu, a poor-grade rice brandy. But although some violence occurred in the context of drinking behavior, generally speaking, this neighborhood did not live up to the reputation of toughness and criminality ascribed to it by the neighboring Buraku. Nor was there evidence of juvenile gangs. The disorganization apparent in this community did not seem to be focused particularly on youth, nor had it resulted in organized gang behavior.

Nevertheless, social cohesion was observably less in this community. Fragile family ties and unregistered common-law marriages were fairly frequent in Iwamoto-cho, as was "wife"-beating. An informant acquainted with the area had an impression that casual liaisons occur in this community more readily than among the lower class people without Buraku background, and there are few sanctions to be invoked against the wife or woman who deserts her husband or mate.

In-and out-mobility in Iwamoto-cho contributed heavily to social and personal tensions and to the fact that family relationships were more fragmented and sexual mores even further relaxed than in the more stable Buraku communities. The Iwamoto-cho community was rather disorganized; community sanctions were not operating, and the force of tradition was almost absent. In the older communities with less mobility or passing, community pressures remained sufficiently strong to discourage complete casualness in human relationships.

It was in the new community particularly that there was greater evidence in our interviews of intrapsychic conflict over one's Burakumin identity. Internalized self-hate was displaced as hostility toward others of Buraku status who could be somehow differentiated from oneself.

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