A Brief History of Buraku Communities and Their Emancipation

Formal emancipation does not end exclusion. In this address from 1919, historian Kita Sadakichi asks why communities once assigned a hereditary low status continued to face barriers in marriage, residence, trade, and ordinary social life. He argues that relief and improvement cannot substitute for emancipation in practice.

His inquiry ranges from ancient household registers and occupational groups to wandering performers, leatherworkers, tomb guardians, and the privileged dependents who became warriors. Names that once marked low standing could become honorable, he observes, while prejudice could survive after its original grounds had disappeared.

The address also exposes the limits of its own reforming outlook. Appeals to shared ancestry sit beside imperial mythology, racial hierarchies, and demands that excluded people acquire the capacity to assimilate. This complete translation preserves those tensions, with notes explaining historical terms and disputed claims.