Historical Reflections on the Question of Social Harmony

How did legal emancipation leave inherited discrimination intact? In this historical booklet, Kita Sadakichi traces the formation of Buraku communities through displacement, labor, social rank, and beliefs about pollution. His account challenges the assumption that excluded communities were inherently different from the surrounding population.

Moving from ancient household registers to medieval riverbank settlements and Tokugawa policing groups, the essay explores how occupations and changing economic circumstances could harden into hereditary stigma. It contrasts those able to leave an excluded status with those confined by superstition and law.

Published in 1928, the argument also reveals its own period: its national ideal of assimilation, paternalistic explanations of poverty, and contentious historical and demographic claims remain visible. This complete translation preserves the author’s reasoning and qualifications rather than replacing them with a modern retrospective account.