Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/06/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 6:09 PM -0700 05.6.2, Richard wrote: >Strong images and commentaries. Thank you for sharing. > >Speaking of the rarely mentioned subjects, has anyone done any >photojournalistic work on either the Emishi, or the Untouchables in >Japan? Could make a very strong piece of work... Thanks for the kind words! <professor mode on> Hmmm... I think you're confusing several groups: Emishi (also known as the ezo) are the aboriginal inhabitants of Northern Japan. They were colonized/killed by the Yamato people of southern Japan in the 1800s. They are the remote village people who appear in the beginning of the movie Princess Mononoke. Ashitaka, the young hero, is one of them. There were two untouchable classes in feudal Japan: the eta and the Burakumin (although they are often glossed as the same). They were "liberated" from the caste structure with the Meiji Restoration in late nineteenth century Japan, although in reality discrimination still happens. In my Minorities and Sexualities in Modern Japan class, I analogize Burakumin as operating similarly to race in the USA but without any difference in skin color or cultural identifiers marking it. Like race in the United States, if you are of former burakumin lineage, you encounter discrimination in education, quality of living, residence, marriage, employment, and social advancement but with the complication that you are ethnically Japanese and no one can tell you are former Burakumin unless they look at your family records. Quite complicated and it usually gets the students in knots. In any case, the former Burakumin are quite sensitive about the issue and since they insist they are ethnically Japanese, there isn't much to photograph, especially now that most of the neighborhoods that used to be segregated buraku-areas are improved. There are a couple of excellent 1960s and 1970s photoessays in the University of Michigan east asia library system. I browsed through them last time I was there, unfortunately I did not jot down their names. <professor mode off> Karen -- Karen Nakamura http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/ http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/