[Sithsaber]

Post here to peel away the scabs that are intriguing anecdotes of oppression from the past and present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot

[feihua]

Post here to peel away the scabs that are intriguing anecdotes of oppression from the past and present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot

You got me to thinking how I cannot recall having ever met anyone known to be burakumin. A lot of Japanese do not even understand the word until it is changed to eta.

Then I got to thinking how I never met a burakumin I didn't like.

Yet, thanks to you, I learned this today:

Yakuza membership
According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in Yakuza: The Explosive Account of Japan's Criminal Underworld (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1986), burakumin account for about 70 percent of the members of Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest yakuza syndicate in Japan.
Mitsuhiro Suganuma, the ex-member of Public Security Intelligence Agency, testified that burakumin account for about 60 percent of the members of the entire yakuza.[9]

Then I thought I never met a Yakuza member who didn't like me.

Then I learned this:

In some areas, burakumin are in a majority..... In Ōtō in Fukuoka Prefecture, they account for over 60 percent.[5]

I recall a student telling me her husband's car was stolen while it was parked in the parking lot of that town's police department.

And now I understand why they had so many barbeque places.

[Rei Murasame]

I wonder what the breakdown of the other 40% is, though. Is there anything on that?

[feihua]

I wonder what the breakdown of the other 40% is, though. Is there anything on that?

Just woke up, asked the wife about the word and she said she knew it but didn't understand why I was asking her.

I did the yakuza bit, the Yamaguchi-gumi bit......

She came out and said "I don't know if it is a nice thing to say, though...it is......uhm, racist."

I said, "Well, that is part of the question: it is not racist. It is not about ethnicity. I want to say I recall it being something about Koreans, but that is not the case at all. The 'racist word' part of it is the 'eta' connection."

She said "what?"

I said "A tah. Eh taw? E-T-A."

She took her head not understanding what I was talking about and turned around.

The other 40% gotta be butchers and shoemakers. That Yakuza connection would come afterwards. It certainly shows some disenfranchisement resulting in inferiority complexes which could increase the ranks of the Yakuza.