Japan from Below

Edo-period Japan – a land we often associate with the majesty of samurai, the elegance of ukiyo-e, the tea ceremony, and the silence of zen gardens. A world of order, where everyone had their place within the social structure: shinōkōshō (士農工商 – samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant). Yet beneath the surface of this harmony, another world existed – invisible, unrecorded in the shogunate’s chronicles and absent from Hiroshige’s colorful woodblock prints. A Japan of people whose homes were not marked on any map. People whose very shadows were avoided, for it was believed that their “touch” brought ritual defilement – kegare (穢れ), a stain no water could ever wash away. This was the Japan of etamura (穢多村) – the villages of the excluded.

A person was born eta and died eta (穢多 – “filled with impurity”). Yet, in the eyes of the shogunate’s law, he was not considered a person at all. A boy was born to be a tanner, an executioner, or a gravedigger, and he would die worn down by a prematurely aged body, never having known any other trade. A girl would marry within the same settlement, never crossing its boundaries. Entire generations knew only a handful of clay huts, the stench of tanned hides, and the rhythm of women’s songs sung in an archaic dialect unintelligible to “real” Japanese.

The men tanned hides, gutted animal carcasses, and the smoke of burning remains, mixed with the acrid scent of tanning workshops, hung above the settlement like an indelible mark. They crafted taiko drums, which would later be used in Shintō shrines and at the grand festivals of Edo – though those who played them would never look their makers in the eye. In their hands were born objects without which Edo-period Japan could not have existed, and yet society pretended that they themselves did not exist. Every step, every breath, every touch was marked by taboo.

Today, we admire Edo’s rich culture through kabuki, ukiyo-e, and the tea ceremony, but we must remember that there existed another, parallel culture of Japan – subversive, hermetic, locked away in multigenerational isolation to such an extent that even the language of the etamura villages was incomprehensible to “real” people.

In this parallel Japan, there was no mobility; dreams were as narrow as the interior of a hut, and the space of life ended at the horizon of the settlement. A child knew their place from birth: the world was divided into the “pure” and the “impure,” and that boundary was never crossed. It was an excluded Japan and yet inseparably tied to the rest of the country – hidden beneath its structures like the roots of a tree that nourish the trunk even as they themselves remain buried in darkness. To truly understand Edo culture, one must also listen to the voices that were silenced for centuries: in the songs of women, in the murmur of settlements absent from the maps, in the languages born on the edge of taboo.

Today, we enter the culture of this other Japan – the culture of the etamura villages – of the “full of impurity,” the “non-humans” cast beyond the boundaries of Tokugawa Japan’s society.

The Other Japan

On the outskirts of Edo, where main roads dissolved into sandy paths and reed-covered fields, lay an etamura – a settlement absent from every official map. No signposts pointed the way, and yet every resident of the capital knew where it was. In the morning, the air smelled of smoke from tanning furnaces and the sour odor of wet hides stretched to dry on wooden racks along the river.

The silence there was different from the stillness of early morning in Edo – not the serenity of zen, but something denser, as if the very air carried the awareness of being “elsewhere,” outside the world that claimed to be real. This was an etamura village – a village of the impure. These were not Japanese, though they spoke Japanese. More than that – in the eyes of Edo’s inhabitants, in their language, and ultimately even under the law of the shogunate – they were not even human. Hinin (非人 – literally, “non-humans”).

A young boy named Genjirō sat on the threshold of his home – a modest hut of unplaned wooden boards, covered by a dark, worn thatched roof. All houses in the etamura looked alike: small, tightly clustered together, with bare earth floors and often no separate rooms. Sitting cross-legged, Genjirō sharpened a small knife for skinning animals. Beside him lay a bowl filled with salt and ash – a mixture used to cleanse blood from hands and tools.

Genjirō was only thirteen, yet his hands were already rough and scarred. From his earliest years, he had learned his father’s craft, as everyone in the settlement did – in etamura, one’s trade was inherited. The eta could not abandon their work to become farmers, merchants, or artisans in Edo. They also could not marry anyone from outside the community. Their very blood bound them to a world that, for everyone else, did not exist.

Genjirō glanced toward the square at the center of the settlement, where the village elders (men over thirty – the average life expectancy of these “non-humans” was low) were gathering for the morning meeting. Above the entrance to the headman’s house hung a small wooden plaque carved with the kanji "清" (sei, “purity”). It was an irony – purity had little to do with how Edo society viewed them. To others, they were 穢多 (eta), “full of impurity,” because they dealt with things Shintō and Buddhism considered defiled: blood, death, corpses.

In front of the houses, deer hides dried in the sun as women softened them with fish oil, using short wooden mallets. Some women sat with children by small hearths, singing old songs about their ancestors – songs unintelligible to outsiders, for they were sung in a dialect interwoven with archaic words and secret terms related to their craft. The language of the etamura itself was like a barrier. It was still Japanese – but little of it would be understood by an Edo townsman, a “real person.”

Sometimes Genjirō listened to his grandfather’s stories, who said that long ago, before they were called the “full of impurity,” the eta, they were known as kawaramono – “people of the riverbanks.” It was by the rivers they worked: skinning animals, making taiko drums, preparing bodies for burial. Even now, in the age of Tokugawa peace, much of their work remained the same. Genjirō knew that when someone died in a nearby village, his father and other men from the settlement would be called upon to handle the burial.

Society rejected them, yet could not function without them. A paradox – one of many found in human societies across the world. Of course, Genjirō knew nothing of this – education (beyond the family craft) in these excluded villages was virtually nonexistent, and the horizon of their thoughts could scarcely stretch beyond the boundaries of the etamura.

That day, a messenger from Edo was expected to arrive, placing an order for new drums for a nearby Shintō shrine. Days like this were special for Genjirō, for he could catch a glimpse of people from outside the community. Outsiders, however, never stepped deep into the settlement – they stopped at the border, where a small post stood bearing the character 「忌」 (imi – “taboo, avoidance”). There, exchanges were made: hides for rice, drums for sake. As though an invisible boundary separated two worlds.

In the afternoon, the young boy helped his father with tanning. They stood beside wooden vats filled with a mixture of ash, water, and tree bark extract. The sharp, acrid smell burned their nostrils, and their hands swelled from constant soaking in the solutions. Sometimes, Genjirō laughed quietly at how their bodies smelled of the settlement itself – a scent that betrayed every eta even in a crowd in Edo.

In the evening, as the sun sank behind the marshes, the people of etamura gathered around the fires. Women told children stories of long ago, and the elders recited songs that were never written down – passed instead in whispers from generation to generation. They spoke of kegare – spiritual impurity – but in their tales, the word held a meaning different from Edo’s. For Genjirō and his people, kegare was no shame; it was natural, part of life itself, a cycle of birth, death, and purification.

From afar, along the main road leading to Edo, came the sounds of kabuki drums and the cries of street vendors. That city felt like another world. And yet, deep down, Genjirō felt that his settlement, too, was part of Japan – hidden, invisible, living to its own rhythm and its own culture.

Within the etamura lay a profound paradox – a world that officially did not exist, yet one that was irreplaceable. To Edo, they were “unclean,” “other,” but in the quiet of the evening fire, in the beat of the taiko drum, in the whispered songs of old, there lived a parallel culture, full of its own rituals, beliefs, and values.

This was the other Japan – unrecorded in chronicles, yet more enduring than those who once sought to erase it from history. A second culture carried by the archipelago, even if the shogunate’s society refused to carry it within “its” Japan.

Society of Edo-Period Japan

The Four Classes – shinōkōshō (士農工商)

The society of Edo-period Japan, ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), rested upon a firm foundation of social hierarchy, one that could be read in the very rhythm of life in its cities and villages. To walk along the narrow streets of Edo – today’s Tokyo – was to witness how this hierarchy shaped not only status but also space itself: the tall gates of samurai residences adorned with family crests (mon), the modest yet orderly huts of peasants, the lively workshops of artisans, and beyond them the bustling merchant districts scented with incense, sake, and new silk, lined with their narrow yet deep machiya houses (more on them here: Machiya: What Were the Townhouses of Edo Like? – The Lives of Ordinary People During the Shogunate).

All of this followed the system of shinōkōshō (士農工商) – the four official social classes – a structure rooted less in economics than in ideology.

At the top of the pyramid were the samurai (士, shi), the formal military elite whose role during the Tokugawa peace shifted from martial to administrative. Though they rarely drew their swords, their authority derived from a Neo-Confucian ethic: they were to act as moral exemplars, guardians of order, and models of loyalty to the shōgun. Samurai made up barely 7–10% of the population, yet their crests and their right to wear the paired swords (daishō – more here: Wakizashi – The Smaller Cousin of the Katana That Bore the Full Weight of Samurai Honor) distinguished them from the rest of society. Their privileges were bound by heavy obligations: a strict honor code, detailed regulations governing dress and lifestyle, and even the right to die, for only samurai were permitted to perform seppuku, the ritual suicide reserved for their class (more about seppuku here: Samurai Seppuku: Ritual Suicide in the Name of Honor, or Bloody Belly Cutting and Hours of Agony?).

Below them were the peasants (農, nō), also called nōmin (農民), regarded as the foundation of the entire state (here, the attentive reader might note a difference from Europe). From their labor came rice – the true measure of wealth, taxation, and prestige in Edo-period Japan. It was no exaggeration to say that every grain of rice in the shōgun’s bowl began in the fields of the nōmin. They constituted about 80% of the population and, though ranked below the samurai, they enjoyed a relatively high moral status – they were seen as the nation’s sustainers. Yet their lives were far from idyllic: heavy taxes, recurring famines, the constant risk of uprisings, and the tight control of feudal lords made them as dependent as they were indispensable.

Below them stood the artisans (工, kō – more about shokunin here: An Hour of Complete Focus – What Can We Learn from Traditional Japanese Craftsmen, the Shokunin?), the inhabitants of workshops redolent of wood, lacquer, indigo dyes, and heated iron. Their social position was ambiguous: they created objects both beautiful and useful, and their craft – from wooden and lacquered bowls to ornate geta sandals – shaped the everyday material culture of Edo Japan. Yet lacking land, they possessed little real political power.

At the very bottom of the system – which may surprise the European reader – were the merchants (商, shō), ironically ranked the lowest and yet often the wealthiest. Within the framework of Confucian ethics, they were regarded as “parasites” – people who created no value but merely traded in it. And yet, it was they who gradually came to control much of the wealth of the era. Declining samurai families sometimes fell into debt to rich merchants (who occasionally went so far as to purchase samurai status for themselves).

The streets of Edo were lined with machiya – elegant merchant houses where silk, sake, and ceramics were sold. Beneath the façade of low status, vast fortunes were born, enabling these merchants to finance kabuki theaters, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and the pleasures of Edo’s entertainment districts. This ironic tension between rank and wealth became one of the driving forces behind the cultural explosion of the Edo period.

Few realize that much (though not all!) of what we consider quintessentially “Japanese” today originates not with the samurai but with the merchant class: the aesthetic of mono no aware, ukiyo-e, the flourishing of kabuki culture, the development of haikai poetry and the works of Bashō, the fashion for luxurious kimonos and yūzen patterns, even the yakuza honor codes (more on machi shū here: Honor Did Not Belong Only to the Samurai – Bravery, Courage, and the Ethos of Life of the machi-shū). And the great masters of ukiyo-e? Hokusai was the son of a mirror craftsman; Hiroshige, the son of a firefighter.

And yet, even this tightly ordered hierarchy, rooted in a Neo-Confucian worldview, did not encompass everyone. Beyond its margins existed a world that Edo preferred to keep silent about. For there were Japanese who did not fit into any of these four classes.

Outside the System: eta, hinin, burakumin

Beyond the official structure lived those referred to as mibun gaijin (身分外人) – “people without status.” Their presence was both indispensable and invisible: they handled the “unclean” aspects of Edo life while being pushed outside society, beyond the city limits, into their own enclaves known as buraku (部落 – literally “segregated district”) or etamura (穢多村 – “village full of impurity”).

Among them, a distinct group was known as hinin (非人) – “non-humans.” The kanji 非 means “not” or “negation,” while 人 means “person” (more about this simple yet fascinating character here: Kanji Characters: Hito and Jin – What Does It Mean to Be Human?). These were the “outsiders,” whose role within Edo’s structure was profoundly paradoxical. On one hand, they fulfilled essential functions: cleaners, gravediggers, executioners, undertakers, sometimes even street performers, jugglers, and actors. On the other hand, their very presence provoked unease, for they were associated with what, in the Japanese concept of religious purity, was called kegare (穢れ) – pollution by death, blood, and disease.

There were two kinds of hinin: hereditary hinin, who passed down their “unclean” professions from generation to generation, and punitive hinin – people relegated to this status as punishment for crimes or debts. In theory, the latter could rejoin mainstream society after redeeming their offenses; in practice, this rarely happened.

Even lower in this unspoken hierarchy were the eta (穢多), a term literally meaning “abundance of impurity” (e – “impurity,” ta – “many”). These were primarily butchers, tanners, drum-makers, bow-makers, and those who worked with bodies – animal or human. Their status was hereditary and inescapable: they could not leave their communities or marry beyond them. In return, they monopolized certain trades – supplying hides for armor and footwear, wood for execution stakes, and sometimes even building the gallows themselves. In Edo, entire families of eta were known by name, carrying out the same “unclean,” yet essential tasks across generations.

The term burakumin (部落民), meaning “people of the hamlets,” appeared only in the 19th century, after the official abolition of eta and hinin status by the Emancipation Edict of 1871. Yet spatial and social segregation persisted long thereafter. In the Edo period, the residents of the buraku lived in a world with its own rules, dialects, rituals, and internal relations. Their language was often incomprehensible to inhabitants of the main cities, and their system of rites – from birth to death – relied on strictly endogamous practices contained within the community.

Though Edo officially projected an image of a homogeneous society, in reality, there were two Japans: the “pure” one, draped in the façade of harmony, and the “impure” one, cast beyond the city’s boundaries, yet inextricably intertwined with its fate.

Without the eta, there would have been no samurai armor, no temple drums. Without the hinin, there would have been no executions, no burials, no clean canals or orderly streets. This was a mirror culture – invisible, yet omnipresent.

Night Work

Evening slowly descended upon the etamura (穢多村), and smoke drifted lazily from the low thatched rooftops. Amid the murmur of voices came the steady rasp of knives against wood and the curt, clipped commands of the master tanner. Yet tonight, there was a strange unease hanging over the settlement.

At the entrance to the village stood Kanzaemon, a middle-aged man with a face carved by deep wrinkles. He was one of the eldest oshiokinin (御仕置人 – executioners), those tasked with carrying out sentences of death. Though his role was essential to Edo society, the “clean” folk from the nearby village treated him, at best, like a repulsive outcast. More often, they simply pretended he didn’t exist, turning their heads away as he passed. Even his shadow was thought to be defiling; people took care to avoid letting it fall upon them. Kanzaemon knew no other life – it had been this way for as long as he could remember. His father, and his grandfather before him, had also been oshiokinin. His son would be, too.

That day, an inspector from Edo Castle had arrived at the etamura. In his hand, he carried scrolls of washi paper – an order to prepare the execution grounds for a captured thief. Kanzaemon listened in silence, a small group of villagers gathering behind him. Some whispered among themselves; others spat quietly into the dust – executions meant more work. Within the settlement, such events were marked by complex rituals: the wood for the scaffold had to be brought from specific forests, and the executioner was required to undergo a cleansing fast accompanied by the recitation of prayers in an archaic dialect.

Beside Kanzaemon stood his wife, Otsune, just returned from tending the small fields by the river. The women of the etamura inhabited a world of their own: they dried hides, stitched leather straps, and preserved a secret tradition of songs known as kawaramono uta – melodies that never reached the “clean” villages. They were sung at births, weddings, and funerals, their lyrics filled with ancient expressions and forgotten turns of phrase inherited from craftsmen of centuries past.

Though the village was closed off, news of the outside world always found its way in. It was often brought by wandering actors and jugglers, themselves excluded from the official caste system. They brought color and illusion to the life of the etamura, telling tales of Yoshiwara’s splendor, the latest fashions of Edo, or the bloody peasant uprisings – and the shogunate’s even bloodier reprisals. In exchange for gossip and stories, they received a meal, a rabbit pelt, or a small coin.

Kanzaemon watched as the inspector walked away toward the main road. In his wake remained a trail of silence and the heavy weight of duty soon to rest upon his shoulders. He knew that by the following morning he would stand upon the execution grounds, and his name would once again be cursed in the surrounding villages. And yet, he felt a strange sense of pride: the etamura lived in shadow and on the margins, but it had its own laws, its own language, and its own memory.

Later that night, beneath a black sky with the moon hanging high, the villagers gathered around a fire as the elders read aloud passages from their family records. These scrolls, kept for generations, recorded who married whom, which crafts passed from father to son, and which families had once been granted the “favor” of the shogunate, allowing them slightly better living conditions. In the glow of the flames, the children listened with wide eyes – this was their history, their tradition, their culture – more important than any distant shogunal decrees.

Though to the outside world, separated by a ring of bamboo groves, the residents of the etamura were “unclean,” here everyone knew their place, the names of their ancestors, and the songs that had been sung for centuries. This was a parallel Japan – a distinct culture whose existence barely broke through the walls of silence.

Naming and Origins

The history of those who lived outside the official social structure of Japan stretches back far earlier than the concepts of eta or hinin themselves. Its roots reach as far as the 7th century, when, under the ritsuryō (律令) legal system modeled on the Chinese structure, society was divided between ryōmin (良民 – “good people,” full citizens) and senmin (賤民 – literally “people of low status”). The latter included slaves and subjugated individuals tasked with the hardest, least esteemed forms of labor.

Contrary to common misconceptions (especially among Japanese themselves; in Poland, such notions are rare), today’s burakumin are not simply “direct descendants” of those early slaves. However, it is within the category of senmin that we find the cultural roots of later exclusion. Over the centuries, these marginal groups transformed and diversified, laying the foundations of a separate culture that would develop in parallel to “official” Japan.

The first clear references to the term eta (穢多) appear in the 13th-century manuscript Chiribukuro. The composition of the word itself is revealing: the character 穢 (e) means “impurity, defilement,” while 多 (ta) signifies “many, abundance.” Etymologically, then, eta refers to “those touched by an abundance of impurity” – people associated with professions considered ritually defiled. These were primarily tanners, butchers, and those involved in the disposal of animal carcasses. Many lived along dried riverbeds, giving rise to other terms such as kawaranin or kawaramono (“people of the riverbanks”).

There, far from the settlements of the ryōmin, arose the first embryonic communities that would later be called etamura – villages of the excluded, absent from official maps and long ignored in population registers.

Alongside this, beginning in the medieval period, the concept of hinin (非人) also emerged – literally “non-humans” or “those who have ceased to be human.” While the eta were primarily defined by their hereditary professions and religious taboos, the category of hinin was more fluid. It included people who had lost their place within the social structure: wanderers, beggars, petty criminals, and those sentenced to exile. Their status was sometimes temporary – a portion of hinin could, after serving their punishment, return to the ranks of the ryōmin. This, however, was impossible for the eta. Over time, though, even this boundary began to blur, and entire hinin communities emerged, cultivating their own rituals, customs, and sometimes distinct dialects, developing a sense of separate identity.

The roots of their exclusion lie not only in economics or politics but, above all, in religion. In Japanese culture, shaped profoundly by Shintō and Buddhism, the concept of kegare (穢れ) – ritual impurity – played a central role. Death, blood, childbirth, illness, and even contact with animal bodies were viewed as forces that threatened the spiritual purity of the community. Within Shintō, such things were to be avoided; where avoidance was impossible, repeated purification rituals were required. Buddhism reinforced these taboos, treating the taking of life as a grave moral transgression. As a result, professions involving meat, hides, executions, or the handling of corpses came to be seen as spiritually contaminating. Those who performed these tasks – thought to be permanently stained by impurity – were pushed to the margins of society.

The Edo period (1603–1868) ultimately froze this structure in place. The system of shinōkōshō (士農工商), introduced by the Tokugawa, precisely defined the roles of the four official classes: samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants. But the eta and hinin were excluded entirely. They were mibun gaijin (身分外人) – “people without status,” omitted from the framework of the official hierarchy. They lived in segregated settlements, could not own land or change their professions, and their marriages were strictly endogamous. Numerous restrictions were imposed on them: they were forbidden from wearing certain hairstyles or geta sandals, and when entering the homes of ryōmin, they had to remove their head coverings and shoes before passing through the gate.

While their lives were meticulously recorded in population registers, their villages often failed to appear on Edo’s maps – as if they formally did not belong to the world of “real Japan.”

Yet these communities were far from chaotic. In certain regions, local leaders known as eta-gashira – “heads of the eta” – held considerable authority. The most famous of these, Danzaemon of Edo, wielded real power over an entire network of etamura in the Kantō region: he appointed executioners, organized the production of hides and bones, and even negotiated taxes and obligations with the shogunate on behalf of his people.

This paradox – of being both “invisible” and utterly indispensable – makes the eta and hinin among the most fascinating groups in the history of Edo-period Japan.

Everyday Life and the Elements of the “Second Culture”

Occupations and Economy

In the world of Edo, the crafts of the eta were not merely useful – they were indispensable. Though officially standing outside the social hierarchy, they held an almost complete monopoly over all work connected to animals. They tanned hides, supplied materials to the armorers, crafted taiko drums stretched with taut cowhide, sewed harnesses, belts, and sandals. Their hands created the objects without which everyday life in Edo could not exist, and yet their very presence was simultaneously rejected.

Shogunate records from the mid-18th century preserve striking data: in some regions of Kantō, as much as 70% of the leather used in Edo came from the network of etamura overseen by a single authority – the renowned Danzaemon.

Among the rivers, on the edges of towns, one could see their workshops, where wet hides hung from wooden racks and the air was heavy with the pungent smell of tanning. The eta maintained a closed economic system: leather was precious, but it was sold through intermediaries, never directly to the “clean” merchants who wished to avoid defiling their hands through contact with “impurity.” Prices were negotiated discreetly and at length, often with the eta-gashira, the village leader, acting as the chief negotiator.

The lives of the hinin (“non-humans”) followed a very different rhythm. This was a more mobile group, harder to capture in statistics. In Edo, they had no single exclusive profession – instead, they performed “dirty work” in both the literal and symbolic sense. They cleaned streets after processions, emptied latrines, oversaw executions, and even marked the bodies of criminals with tattoos – black stains of shame that would last a lifetime. Some hinin gravitated toward entertainment; among them were the first kabuki actors and itinerant performers. Their existence was ambiguous: scorned and marginalized, yet also alluring, welcomed onstage but rejected the moment the curtain fell.

Thus, within Edo’s economic structure, there existed a paradox: those whom the “clean” world avoided provided it with the tools, the entertainment, and the materials it could not do without. At the crossroads of these two Japans – the official and the excluded – a culture was born that remained invisible for centuries.

Customs, Language, and Rituals

The etamura (穢多村) – villages of the excluded – lived by their own rhythm. Marriages were arranged almost exclusively within the community, and endogamy was so strict that in many regions of Edo the genealogies of families were known in precise detail across several generations. Ceremonies followed closed, unique forms. Weddings were usually conducted without the involvement of Shintō priests, who refused to grant blessings to “unclean” people. In their place, the eta developed local purification rituals: priests were chosen from among their own, and prayers were recited in the shadows of modest wooden shrines dedicated to the eta’s protective deities.

The language of the etamura evolved along its own paths. In many areas, local dialects emerged, filled with archaic expressions, borrowings, and taboo words, gradually becoming incomprehensible to outsiders. Euphemisms abounded for work involving death, blood, and impurity – these things were never spoken of directly. These were also communities that developed secret songs and stories passed down orally. Among them, a special place was reserved for kawaramono uta – “songs of the river people.” These melodies spoke of the hardships of daily life, the grief of exclusion, but also carried humor and playful wordplay.

Funeral rites differed greatly from those of the “clean” ryōmin. Major temples often refused to accept the bodies of the eta and hinin, leading to the establishment of separate cemeteries, divided from the “true” land of others by symbolic stakes made from white branches. Strict purification rituals governed these practices: before returning from a funeral, mourners would pass through juniper smoke or rinse their hands with water poured into bowls carved from ash.

Adaptation

Despite their deep isolation, elements of this “second culture” seeped quietly into the mainstream of Edo Japan. Among the hinin emerged the first kabuki actors, wandering from city to city, their art eventually becoming one of the great pillars of urban culture. Many musical and dance motifs that today seem inseparably linked with traditional Japanese folk culture actually originated in the buraku – the settlements of the excluded. The traditional taiko drums, now associated with the pristine spirituality of Shintō shrines, would not exist without the eta artisans who made their skins.

These communities also celebrated their own festivals – modest yet laden with symbolism. During them, prayers were offered to local kami for abundant harvests, good health, and protection from floods, while participants sang songs and danced to the rhythms of drums whose sound was never heard beyond the settlement’s edge. It was a world unto itself, where traditions endured for centuries, untouched by the will of the shogunate.

The End of the Eta?

The abolition of the official status of eta and hinin in 1871 was one of the earliest gestures of modernization in Meiji-era Japan. The edict issued at the time, known as the Kaihōrei (解放令), declared to the world that the formerly “unclean” now became full-fledged citizens, incorporated into the framework of a shared national identity. They were given a new designation: shin-heimin (新平民) – “new commoners” or “new villagers.”

Symbolically, this marked the dawn of an era of equality, a time when the old hierarchy was meant to dissolve and every inhabitant of Japan, regardless of birth, was to stand equal before the law. But history is rarely so simple, and words written in ink do not always reach into the fabric of daily life.

The edict abolished the law but did not erase memory. The former etamura – villages of the excluded – still existed where they had always been: on the city outskirts, along rivers, in the shadows of wealthier districts. Even if, on paper, the boundaries of status had disappeared, in people’s hearts and minds they remained clear. The most potent instrument of this invisible segregation became the koseki (戸籍) – the family registry system. A mere glance at a birthplace was enough to infer origins. The land once inhabited by the eta and hinin carried its own stigma: an address could weigh heavier than a name. In official documents, legal status was equal, but in the eyes of society, divisions older than the shogunate endured.

Over time, the stigma persisted in subtle, hidden, and often silent forms. Well into the 20th century, there existed unofficial compilations known as chimei sōkan – lists of buraku locations, the former eta settlements. Major companies, including Toyota and Nissan, used them to conduct discreet “background checks” when hiring employees. Until quite recently, some families in Japan would hire private detectives to ensure that a prospective son- or daughter-in-law had no roots in the old buraku. Many people concealed their origins, severing visible ties with their communities as soon as they left their hometowns. Yet secrets often came to light, and when they did, the decisions of employers, schools, or families could be as harsh as they had been in Tokugawa times.

It is difficult to uproot divisions that have stood as the foundations of social order for centuries. Emancipation did not erase the associations between “impurity” and former professions; many buraku remained poor neighborhoods with limited access to education, public spaces, and economic opportunities. Contemporary studies suggest that although overt discrimination has become rarer, unequal access to education and prestige persists. The problem has long since transcended legal rights – it is no longer a question of privilege, but of mentality and memory.

In this sense, the story of the eta, hinin, and burakumin is more than a narrative of exclusion. It is a reminder of how deeply societies remain bound by their own narratives, how divisions can endure even after the laws have changed. Japan has traveled far – from shogunate to modern nation-state, from the closed world of Edo to a global technological power – yet the shadows of the past have not vanished entirely. The former buraku still exist, though no one calls them that anymore, and children raised in these neighborhoods must still, more often than not, fight for the right to be “simply Japanese.”

Perhaps this is the essence of the story: true equality is not born in edicts but in the consciousness of people. Community requires more than new names; it demands the labor of memory, an understanding of history, and the acceptance of its weight.

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Kabukimono Longing for War: Free Spirits, Deadly Rogues, and Madmen in Women’s Kimonos

Women of the Yakuza – Silently Bearing the Scars on Their Bodies and Hearts

"Strong Japanese Women"

see book by the author

of the page

    未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

Write us...

Ciechanów, Polska

dr.imyon@gmail.com

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