Burakumin

Burakumin, literally hamlet people or village people, is the name given to a stigmatized outcaste group at the bottom of the traditional Japanese social hierarchy, historically associated with occupations considered ritually impure under Buddhist and Shinto purity norms, including butchery, leatherworking, tanning and undertaking. The group's historical ancestors, known during the Edo period as eta and hinin, occupied a formal outcaste status below the four-tier mibunsei status hierarchy of samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants, subject to residential segregation into separate hamlets and legal restrictions on marriage, movement, dress and occupation. The 1871 Emancipation Edict formally abolished the eta and hinin designations and granted burakumin communities legal equality as commoners, but social discrimination persisted in practice long after formal abolition, continuing to affect marriage prospects, employment and housing well into the twentieth century, documented and contested by organizations including the Buraku Liberation League. Discrimination against burakumin descendants, identifiable historically through residential registry records tied to formerly segregated buraku communities rather than through any ethnic or racial marker, remains a documented, though diminishing, social issue in contemporary Japan.