Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
46
initiatives concern the re-definition of the spatial image of the district and the surroundings
with new meanings relating to the locality, the production of leather, and its importance
within the wider context of the nation.
The ‘Osaka Naniwa Human Rights Respect Town Making’ project, in turn, was
initiated in 2002 in Naniwa district (Osaka) by the BLL with the support of national,
municipal, and local administrations. The project includes the Museum of Human Rights
Liberty Osaka
and the ‘Road of Human Rights and Taiko (drums)’, and aims at shedding a
new light on the
taiko
drum industry in the district and transforming Naniwa leather town
into the ‘hometown of the drums’ (
taiko no furusato
).
In the next section, I outline the history of the buraku districts as heterotopic spaces,
their marginalization, identification and current condition. In the second section, I describe
programmes and language of cultural nationalism in Japan as the institutional and ideological
framework for buraku activism. Ultimately, I introduce the two leather towns, museums and
other activities and their engagement in local development programmes.
The Buraku as a Heterotopia and Its Transformations in the Urban Context
The spatial boundaries of the buraku areas have long been subject to constant transformations
and reconfigurations. In medieval Japan (1185-1600), the areas in which outcasts were
allowed to live were geographically mapped. These groups were called ‘base people’
(
senmin
), lived in tax-free areas and engaged in occupations such as care-taking of tombs,
collecting food for the hunting falcons of the nobility,
funeral services, strings making,
leather tanning ad working, butchering, drum making, footgear and shoes manufacturing, and
tatami
floor mat making. Other professions were artistic, religious and shamanistic practices
undertaken during funerals and rituals. The ambiguity associated with these people referred
also to their residency in peripheral and marginal locations. While some special status people
did not have permanent residence, others resided in settlements in undesirable areas such as
river-banks, under bridges and near slopes. All these different categories of Medieval
senmin
fell under the outcast groups during the Feudal time (1603 onwards) including the
eta
(literally, much filth) and
hinin
(literally, non-human)
.
The
eta
included people engaged with
occupations such as caretaking of tombs, funeral services, leather tanning and working,
butchering, drum and shoe making. The term
kawaramono
(people of the river banks)
referred to those people living in riverbed districts and dealing with occupations such as
gravediggers, road cleaners, comb makers and ritual puppeteers (Law 1997: 70). A number of
