Portrait of a Tokugawa Outcaste Community ... - East Asian History

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The editor and editorial board of EastAsian History would like to acknowledgethe contribution made to the journal byMarion Weeks.Marion joined what was then the Departmentof Far Eastern History in 1977. Fromthat time, she was involved in variouscapacities with, first, Papers on Far EasternHistory, and then East Asian History,for which she served as businessmanager from its inception. By the timeof her retirement from the Division ofPacific and Asian History in November2007, Marion had become the heart andsoul of the journal.Over the years she worked with manyeditors-Andrew Fraser, John Fincher,Sydney Crawcour, Ian McComas Taylor,Jennifer Holmgren, Geremie Barme,Benjamin Penny-as well as numerousassociate editors, copy editors, printersand, of course, countless authors andmanuscript readers. All owe her animmense debt of gratitude.East Asian History would certainly nothave been the same without Marion-attimes, without her, East Asian Historymay not have been at all.Imperial Summer Retreat, Chengde, Lois Conner, 2000
PORTRAIT OF A TOKUGA W A OUTCASTE COMMUNITY Timothy D. AmosThe aim of this article is to examine the lives and experiences of "outcastes"in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century eastern Japan (presentdaySaitama prefecture) commonly referred to as eta t7 and hinin FA l Japanese historians have laid the groundwork for the present studywith over three decades of careful empirical research. While indebted tothese scholars, I wish to focus on some of the complexity and dynamismof the lives and relationships of outcaste communities occasionally lostin previous studies because of particular methodological concerns arisingfrom ideological differences. 2 Understanding these groups principallyas premodern antecedents of modern burakumin tl'1i.§;, a commonteleology in literature on the subject, tends to obscure the realities of theirdaily lives and the deeper historical meaning of their experiences. 3 Inrecords like Documents o/the House o/Suzuki (Suzuki-ke monjo **)(in and other previously unpublished materials, 4 marginalized Tokugawa"status groups" (mibunteki shudan $.t5ti¥JBB) appear as distinct yetfluid social/occupational groups with problematic status designations whoexperience changes that both reflect and suggest the existence of largerhistorical processes at work. 5This study, in constructing a portrait of life in an early modern outcastecommunity, is concerned with three main questions. Firstly, what did lifelook like for members of eta and hinin communities during the latterhalf of the Tokugawa period? Secondly, what change, if any, occurredwithin rural outcaste communities during this time? And thirdly, knowingfrom previous scholarship that this period is characterized by an intensificationof discriminatory poliCies by the Tokugawa shogunate, what effect,1 The term "outcaste" is reluctantly employedhere. While it is clear that the main outcastegroups in eastern Japan were subject to extremepractices of discrimination during theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it isalso true that they assumed official functionssuch as policing and guard duties-clutieswhich located them firmly within a largermechanism of shogunate governance. I willhereafter cease to place the word outcastein quotes although it is my intention to continueto see this word as problematic. For agood introduction to the eta and problemsof terminology see the introduction to NoahMcCormack's contribution in an earlier issueof this journal: "Buraku Immigration in theMeiji Era-Other Ways to Become Japanese',"East Asian History 23 (June 2002): 87.2 For an in-depth discussion of this problem,see "Introduction" in Timothy D. Amos,"Ambiguous Bodies: Writings on the JapaneseOutcaste" (PhD diss., Australian NationalUniversity, 2005), pp.1-27.3 Some scholars do seriously questionsimplistic linkages between pre-modern etaand hinin groups and modern burakumincommunities. See, for example, any of thepost-1990 works of Hatanaka Toshiyuki,especially Burakushi no owari [The End ofBuraku History] (Kyoto: Kamogawa lOVER83
Page 1 and 2: EastAsianHistoryNUMBER 32/33 . DECE
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS1 The Moral Status of the B
Page 5: West Lake from Wang Villa (Wang Zhu
Page 14 and 15: 90 TIMOTHY D. AMOSFigure 5Reproduct
Page 16 and 17: 92TIMOTHY D. AMOS26 Tsukada, Mihuns
Page 18 and 19: 94TIMOTHY D. AMOS34 SDKK, ed., Suzu
Page 20 and 21: 96TIMOTHY D. AMOS42 Harada Tomohiko
Page 22 and 23: 98 TIMOTHY D. AMOSFigure 6History o
Page 24 and 25: 100 TIMOTHY D. AMOSentitled to clos
Page 26 and 27: 102TIMOTHY D. AMOS53 Saitama-ken, e
Page 28 and 29: 104TIMOTHY D. AMOS59 Ibid., 72 [135
Page 30 and 31: 106TIMOTHY D. AMOS64 This is a sent
Page 32: 108TIMOTHY D. AMOSConclusionRelatio

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