History of toilets and sanitation (Video on Untouchability)

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "phillip.ernest"

<phillip.ernest wrote:

>

> Did the relative weakness of the caste system in (Buddhist) Sri Lanka

> have something to do with the development of advanced toilets and

> sanitation?

 

Certainly the advancement of toilet system helped in not heaping this

job on a section unempowered people.

 

I dont think human waste had otherwise been considered anything 'evil'

to be caste-off on to someone else. In India, the old, sick and infirm

have always been cared for in the homes, and family members gave/give

care, including handling their waste. The only thing family members

will not do on their own is cremation of their dead.

 

The following is from unesco.org: The main point to note is "The word

Burakumin referred then to those who laboured mainly in

slaughterhouses, tanneries, knacker's yards and morgues—people who

worked with bodies, carcasses and blood, occupations that are unclean

according to Japan's ancient Shinto religion."

 

The Burakumin, Japan's invisible outcasts

 

"Japan's smooth social fabric is just an illusion," says Nadamoto

Masahisa, who teaches modern history at Kyoto University. "It's still

based on invisible castes and as Burakumin, we're at the bottom of the

ladder." Alongside his teaching, Masahisa is fighting to defend the

Burakumin (or Eta-Hinin, which can be translated as "polluted or dirty

non-persons") whom society continues to shun.

 

The Buraku, as they are also known, were seen until the second half of

the 19th century as an "untouchable" minority. Numbering over two

million in a country of 126 million people, they live in some 5,000

ghettos, which are the direct result of an official outcast status

that was abolished in 1871 at the start of the Meiji era, when the

country began industrializing at a rapid pace.

 

The word Burakumin referred then to those who laboured mainly in

slaughterhouses, tanneries, knacker's yards and morgues—people who

worked with bodies, carcasses and blood, occupations that are unclean

according to Japan's ancient Shinto religion.

 

All official discrimination against the Buraku has long disappeared.

The authorities point to the fact that members of this invisible caste

today have the same legal rights as all other Japanese. They have the

same physical traits, speak the same language and share the same

religion.

 

But written laws are not always the same as what goes on in people's

minds. Masahisa and other militants are campaigning against unofficial

discrimination toward the Burakumin by property-owners, estate agents

and company officials. "A lot of Japanese think twice before renting

to a Burakumin," he says. "If a person is identified as one or says he

is, everything becomes harder. If you rent to a Buraku, people say

you'll have bad luck."

 

In modern Japan, the Burakumin are also socially marginalized. "In the

1960s and 1970s, they provided most of the workers in construction and

industry," says a lawyer who is fighting against the wage

discrimination long practised in large companies against the

Burakumin. "Today they're the first victims of the economic crisis."

Their concentration in areas such as Osaka and the old imperial

capital of Kyoto makes them easier to spot, which only encour-

ages many to deny their social origins. To take one example, an

influential politician from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party,

Hiromu Nonaka, has always denied his connection with the Burakumin.

Even worse, some bourgeois Japanese families make illegal checks on

the ancestors of their children's future spouses "to avoid polluting

the family," as they put it. They hire special genealogical agencies

to comb through the old koseki (family registers) at the prefectures,

often with the tacit approval of local officials.

 

Richard Werly, French journalist based in Japan