Burakumin- Japan's "untouchables"

[Tanuki]

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/i-wanted-to-escape-this-life-by-hiding-who-i-was?shell

..."Professor Risa Kumamoto, 48, has indeed come a long way from her childhood home – a hamlet of shunned “untouchables” – and escaped the grips of oppressive poverty and outright discrimination. 
...

Now lecturing at Kindai University in Osaka, she is a respected academic in the fields of human rights research and sociology. 

But as a descendant of burakumin (literally “hamlet people”), getting to where she is entailed overcoming a mountain of odds.

Burakumin are the underclass in a centuries-old social hierarchy that is a relic of the feudal shogunate era.

The caste system was outlawed in 1871 and the burakumin “emancipated”, but the yoke of oppression remains.

The burakumin were considered “unclean” for holding jobs shunned by the wider Shinto and Buddhist society – often ones involving animals, blood or death. They include butchers, leather tanners, animal trainers as well as executioners, funeral undertakers and garbage collectors."...(more)

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Hierarchical systems maintain the hierarchy.

Very grateful that Japan has instituted, if not embraced, democracy.

[marble falls]

2. This shows me how very dificult ending racism is going to be.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Yes. Institutional inequalities tend to last for several generations after they are "outlawed"...