The Symbolism of Social Discrimination: A Decoding of Discriminatory Language

Author(s): Osamu Mihashi

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 4, Supplement: An Anthropological Profile of
Japan (Aug. - Oct., 1987), pp. S19-S29
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research

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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 28, Number 4, August-October I987

? I987 by The Wenner-GrenFoundationfor AnthropologicalResearch.All rights reserved ooII-3204/87/2804-ooI7$I.oo

Discrimination indicates a relation, and therefore it has

many meanings. It is traditional in sociology and social
psychology to distinguish "prejudice" from "discrimination," the former emphasizing the psychological and the
latter denoting a system. In contrast, I have suggested
the existence of something that links what is behind the
discrimination, which is really a misconception of the
person discriminated against, with the stereotypes. I
have identified this something as symbolic thinking and
have approached the problem of discrimination against
Koreans resident in Japan and against the minority
called burakumin from this viewpoint (Mihashi I973).
In cultural anthropology, in which symbols themselves
are the subjects of study, analyzing the world around one
in terms of symbols is a matter of consciousness as well
as system, and therefore the concept of discrimination
naturally encompasses both prejudice and discrimination as defined in other fields. Considering the problem
of discrimination from this point of view focuses attenOSAMU MIHASHI iS Professorin the Department of Human Sciences at Wako University (2i60 Kanai-ch6,Machida-shi,Tokyo
tion on the thinking behind the relationship called disI94-0I,
Japan).Bom in I936, he received his B.A. in sociology
crimination and enables us to grasp the dynamics of that
from Tokyo University in I960. After serving as head of the rerelationship.
searchprogramdepartmentof the Nippon ResearchCenter Co.,
In the times when people were bound to feudal staLtd., he began teaching sociology at the university in I969. He has
tuses, "discrimination" simply meant "distinction,"
carriedout a number of surveys, among them surveys of domestic
workersin buraku industry, leather workers, and Koreanand Chiand no one bothered to discuss its nature. They simply
nese residents of KanagawaPrefecture.His researchinterests are
lived within the discrimination. In a sense, then, the
in contemporarydiscrimination and its sociohistory and in socioproblem of discrimination arose only in modern timeshistory from the viewpoint of the human body. His publications
after people were freed from the feudal restrictions. If we
include Sabetsu ron Noto (Notes on Discrimination) (Tokyo:
Shinsensha, I973 and I986 [revisededition]), Tobenai Karada:
define discrimination operationally as a relationship in
Shintai-sei no Shakaigaku (BodySituation: A Sociological Essay
which one group imposes extremely disadvantageous
on ContemporaryJapaneseSociety) (Tokyo: Sanseido, i982), and,
on another, it can be found throughout hiswith others, Nihon no Nakano Kankoku-Chosen-jin,Chu2goku-jin conditions
but
it
is the feeling of many that the degree of
tory,
(Koreanand Chinese Residents in Japan)(Tokyo: Akashi Shoten,
discrimination, if indeed that can be measured, has inI986).
creased in modern times (Takatori, Noma, and Yasuoka
I984). Therefore, discrimination must be treated as a
problem intimately related to the modem age and connected with both the surface aspects and the depths of
culture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of discrimination today and the way in which
it is related to "modernity" by employing the comprehensive approach introduced by cultural anthropology. I will focus on bullying (ijime)1 and on discrimination against some of the main minority groups in Japan.

The

Social

Symbolism

of

Discrimination

A Decoding of Discriminatory
Language

by Osamu Mihashi

Bullying
The materialization of the definition of discrimination
just offered can be seen in the bullying that occurs in
elementary and junior-high schools. The newspapers for
February 3, I986, reported the shocking story of the
suicide of a boy in the second year of junior high school,
Hirofumi Shikagawa, who had been unable to bear the
bullying directed at him in school. According to
Mainichi Shimbun for that date, he left behind a note

I. Conceming violence in the school, not only bullying among

students but also violence of teachers toward students must be
considered.
SI9

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S2o

j CURRENT

ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 28, Number 4, August-October 1987

saying, "I don't want to die yet, but this is 'hell on earth.'
Even if I die, my death will be useless if some other
person is going to be the next victim. This is my last
wish: please don't do it any more." Let us look back
upon the six months that drove him to his death: How it
started: He became the target of bullying because he was
physically weak. How he was bullied: (i) He was ordered
to go and punch a younger student and, when he refused,
was beaten. (2) He was made to dance in the hallway
after having his face scribbled on with a felt-tip pen. (3)
While he was absent from school to evade the bullying,
the bullies performed a "funeral" for him using his desk
as the altar. As evidence of this they left a square piece of
fancy paper containing the signatures of those who had
"attended the funeral." (4) He was made to climb a tree
in the playground and sing a song. The group that took
part in the bullying: In the beginning it was a small
group with whom he was friends. However, almost everyone in the class wrote a message on the card used for
the "funeral."
It is difficult to get a complete picture of bullying
cases, first because they occur under various conditions,
often unknown to the teachers, and secondly because
investigation is not undertaken until the bullying ends
in bodily injury or suicide and even then is often
insufficient. Even when there is an investigation, the
rights of minors limit the amount of publicity it may be
given. The case having occurred on the school premises,
news reports and measures taken against the bullying
are canalized so that bullying will be abolished by social
means. Despite these constraints, however, it is possible
to identify many problems related to discrimination by
comparing reported cases.
First, on how it began: Whereas Shikagawa was bullied
because he was physically weak, in other cases the victim is slow in his or her movements, bad at sports, short
or fat, or has a physical handicap such as deafness. The
causes differ in detail, but it seems that a person with
physical features diverging from the average becomes
marked. Marking is sometimes done instantly by an act

of name-calling.Accordingto Hosaka (i983:27),

in one

case a bullied first-year junior-high boy was of "slight

build" and low achievement both in schoolwork and in
sports, but the bullying began only when, after a physical checkup at school, it was discovered that he had
threadworms and a classmate who happened to find out
about it shouted, "Hey, he's got threadworms!" Thenceforth he was called "Threadworm." Matsuda, pointing
to the relations between conqueror and conquered in
myth, asserts, "The origin of discriminatory words lies
in the homage paid the victor by the vanquished and the
naming of the latter by the former when the two first

meet" (Inoue et al.

I977:23).

In a case like that of

"Threadworm," in which no homage is involved, the

relation between the namer and the named will not
change unless the person given the nickname is ready to
fight back against the namer. This case developed as
follows (Hosaka I983:II7-I8):
"Days of hell began for
Yoshio [fictitious name]. When he was in charge of serv-

ing at lunchtime and served the soup, the bullies held

their noses ("Ifyou eat this, you'll become a threadworm
too"), and almost no one would eat it. When Yoshio
found that he was the only one to have eaten all of his
soup, he felt sick and went to the toilet to vomit." In
another case, a girl in the first year of junior high who
committed suicide in February I985 had been physically
weak because of asthma and introversive. She had been
called such names as "Germ" and "Dirty" and afterward
ignored completely (Mainichi Shimbun, September 22,
I985). In yet another case, a boy who playfully rubbed
his sweaty arm after a gym class and showed the dirt to
his friends ended up being bullied by them when they
exclaimed, "You're dirty!"
From these cases it is apparent that bullying is triggered by some kind of marking process, and in this
marking germs and uncleanliness are metaphors for incompetence in sports, etc. Today's children would be
unfamiliar with the term kegare (pollution), but the
terms used by the children in these cases could be said to
denote it.2
Let us now look at the characteristics of the acts of
bullying. The bullying of Shikagawa consisted in forcing
him to do things he detested. The first of these is literally the ritual of submission, and the second could
perhaps be interpreted as a dance to show his submission, calling to mind as it does the image of the Hayato (a
tribe conquered in ancient times), who danced as they
sang, "The elder god, with his loincloth about him,
rubbed red clay onto his face and hands and said to his
younger brother, 'As you can see, I have polluted myself.
I will henceforth become an actor.'" To the children,
the hallway of the school is public space. At the same
time, it is a boundary not belonging to any particular
classroom. In forcing Shikagawa to dance there the bullies were offering his dance to the others as a kind of
sideshow. We are not given sufficient information on
Shikagawa's case, but it is often the case that acts of
bullying include (sometimes to a large extent) not talking to or completely ignoring the person who has become the target. This is a kind of isolation. The mock
funeral for Shikagawa is a ritual that symbolically eliminates him. (We will disregard the fact that some teachers
themselves contributed their signatures to the message
card, some knowing its purpose and others not.)
Finally, the fourth incident is worth noting. It is not
known how many of the classmates witnessed it, but the
pattern resembles that of the second. At the same time,
it carries another symbolic significance in the very fact
that they treated him like a "bug." This can be said to
have been an act of forcing him out of the category of
human and into that of nature. This interpretation is
possible in a number of cases: a boy in his third year of

2. Takatori (1979) reports that this sense of pollution spreadfrom

the medieval nobility. On recent folklore studies of the more dynamic sense that the word carriedin ancient times, see Tanigawa

et al. (i9831.

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MIHASHI

junior high school who committed suicide in September

I985, besides being forced to swallow detergent, subjected to violence, and coerced into handing over his
money, had been made to eat weeds (Mainichi Shimbun,
October 2, I985). Similar types of bullying, such as forcing someone to eat willow leaves, abound, although they
are not always reported in the press.
As for the extraction of money or other valuables, it
may be that the bully really needed the money, but in
most cases this is a ritual of submission as well. Such
coercion usually develops into coercion to perform acts
of other kinds-shoplifting,
stealing money from parents, etc.-and eventually comes to light. The reversehiding of the victim's possessions (lunch, shoes, sports
gear, etc.)-is also frequent. This can be interpreted as
creating a kind of artificial state of deficiency that reinforces the markedness. The possessions taken are usually scattered about on deserted streets.
Those who take part in the bullying are often children
of the same class. Shikagawa's classmates bullied another student in front of the teacher even after his death,
right after the school had announced its resolution to
eliminate bullying: the act was intended to test the
teacher's attitude. Moreover, a flier denouncing the bullies by name as "fiends" was distributed around the
neighborhood (Mainichi Shimbun, February I3, I986).
The handwriting on it was an adult's, and it can be seen
from this that the bullying-bullied relation was not only
between a particular group of bullies and Shikagawa but
more widespread within the school. Bullying does not,
however, find its way out of the institution. It sometimes even happens that a change of classes at the beginning of a new academic year puts an end to it. The group
of bullies who actually perform the acts of bullying is
made up of only a few members, but, as can be seen in
the instance of the mock funeral mentioned above, other
classmates are part of the scene as onlookers or sometimes even timid participants. The point is that bullying
takes place among those who know each other wellwithin what one might even call a kind of community.
Before finishing this brief decoding of the acts of bullying, one more comment must be added, and that is that
bullying activates the class. Not only the actual bullies
but also the rest of the class have been observed to become lively. A member of the audience for a lecture I
gave on the subject to the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology confessed to me afterward that "when
someone in the class is being bullied, the rest of the class
becomes animated and class work becomes much easier."
What we have seen of bullying so far brings to mind
the folklore of the killing of the stranger discussed by
Komatsu (I985:86): "In a word, folklore is recounted to
lend consistency to the otherwise inconsistent aspects
of the folk society, and it is supported by folk society's
latent fear of the 'stranger' and the idea of exclusion." In
the case of bullying the "stranger" is so easily created
that it seems difficult to compare him to the "stranger"
of the folk society, but let us consider where the bullying

Symbolism of Discrimination | S2I

takes place. It takes place in schools, where the individual's "personality" and human rights are respected,
where knowledge is conveyed according to the law of
causality based on modern science, not according to
some kind of symbolic thinking, and where the equality3
of human beings is assumed. To employ the words of
I. D. Illich, the school is modem society in miniature.
Students are ranked and evaluate themselves according
to the hensachi (a type of deviation value employed to
evaluate student achievement) calculated from the
marks they get on tests, choosing their courses in lifewhich high school or university is "appropriate" for
them, and so on-accordingly. "Equality" and "rank"
both exist as if self-evident truths in the school and in
modem society, and no way of overcoming this paradox
and enabling those who differ to meet on equal terms
has been found. (This situation is also found in companies.) In reality, the only satisfactory explanation is to
speak of an individual's "ability" and consider this "ability" susceptible to improvement. Such vagueness, in the
end, leaves it up to each person to calculate his or her
own ability, perhaps with despair or resignation. The
school administration assumes that such situations will
arise.
A person who is inferior in some way is made into a
stranger, and the best thing to do with him is to drive
him away. Needless to say, high-achieving students
sometimes become the target of bullying when they are
revealed as defenseless against teasing arising from envy
of their grades. In such cases, the defenselessness' is the
feature that marks them. It could be said that the bully
sees in the victim the inferiority that he fears. It is
widely known that some take part in bullying out of fear
of becoming the next victim.
So far, Komatsu's killing-of-the-stranger framework
and the bullying framework overlap. Komatsu also suggests, however (p. 87), "It could be said that the 'stranger'
from outside the society is killed in order to 'kill' a particular family within the folk society." His detailed
analyses of folklore give evidence of this, and the dynamism that produces the folklore lies in the structure of
"stranger"/"folk society"/"one particular family within
the society." In the case of bullying, the "stranger" is
created, but the uncontrollable fear of the stranger found
in the folk society is absent. Lacking this, the bullies
have no need whatever to kill their victim, and consequently the bullying is, for them at least, only a game.
When we look at the process that starts with namecalling, then makes a victim of this stranger by forcing
pollution on him and driving him to the periphery, we
are unable to find any feeling of fear. Marking as
"Threadworm," "Germ," or "Dirty" is not assignment
to the category of "nature" in the binary system of "cul3. Evenness in the notion of equality has been exaggeratedin the
educational system.
4. In fact, it is often the case that violence within the school occurs
as a result of revenge or when the former victim of bullying becomes the bully.

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S.2

| CURRENT

ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 28, Number 4, August-October 1987

ture" versus "nature." In the first place, such names do

not call up the image of chaos; they are merely negative
things that have their own place in the chain of causality
delineated by modem science. Pollution is feared and
avoided because originally it was related to the "nature"
and "chaos" of the binary categories "culture" versus
"nature" : "order" versus "chaos." Even when bullies
force their victim to eat weeds or treat him like a pet or
an insect, they are not relegating him to the category of
"nature" and "chaos" and most likely have no intention
of doing so. (It is needless to say that treatment as a nonhuman is extremely contemptuous and can be agony for
the victim. This particular act of bullying may remind
older readers of the "cicada" [minminzemi]-forcing the
victim to climb a tree and urinate while chirping like a
cicada-, one of the types of bullying commonly carried
out against raw recruits in the former Japanese imperial
army.)
Perhaps I have spent too much time analyzing acts of
bullying; they are, after all, called bullying and not discrimination. When for one reason or another the victim
eludes them, the bullies can find a new victim with
some kind of inferiority. This is clearly different from
the lasting discrimination against groups such as the
burakumin, Koreans resident in Japan, the physically
handicapped, and so on. Having looked closely at the
problem of bullying, however, we notice two important
points. First, the overall framework of the acts of bullying is very close to the main hypothesis related to discrimination proposed by cultural anthropology. It is suggested that the members of a community achieve order
and identity by driving to the periphery the marked, polluted person (the wanderer, the stranger, the vulnerable,
and so on). Those driven to the periphery are anti-order
entities and are symbolically ambivalent, and therefore
when they come into contact with a community they
bring confusion to its order and activate its stagnant culture. When we assume a sequence of bullying in which
the target changes over time, we see in it a dramatic
process of social discrimination. Secondly, we notice
that the symbolic meanings of the acts of bullying are
always added on after the actual bullying. Shikagawa's
suicide was literally the realization of what the mock
funeral had symbolized. The nickname "Threadworm"
can hardly be considered symbolic of an entity that
emerges from chaos to threaten people, eventually
finding its place in their subconscious; it is a meaningless, normative word. The key to the problem is that the
framework of symbolic thinking just mentioned seems
to be becoming normative.

Burakumin and Koreans

The burakumin and the Koreans resident in Japan have
both been the targets of extreme discrimination for a
long time. The two groups, of course, came into existence by completely different historical processes. The

former had its origin in the feudal system of the Edo

period (though its development into today's burakumin
has not been unilinear), and the latter came into being
when Koreans came to Japan as a result of forced migration following the colonization of the Korean peninsula

in

I9IO.

The heart of the problem is that these two

groups are treated as having similar standing within the

structure of discrimination; such a concept is itself the
cause of discrimination. Members of neither group enjoy
equal opportunity for employment, and therefore the
percentage of households receiving welfare benefits is
higher than that in other groups and the kinds of occupations in which those with work are engaged differ from
those of other groups. Discrimination against them with
regard to marriage still occurs, and they are often denied
the opportunity to live outside their communities.
While I cannot go into detail (but see Osaka Buraku I983
and Kanagawa-ken I985), the point is that forces that
prevent them from extricating themselves from the situation are always at work. In the case of the burakumin,
for example, there is a directory of such communities,
bought secretly by detective agencies and companies,
that may be consulted to determine whether an applicant for a position or a prospective marriage partner
comes from a buraku or not (Mihashi I986:appendix).
For Koreans resident in Japan there is discrimination
under the Alien Registration Act, which requires the
registration of fingerprints and the carrying of a registration card at all times. On this point their case clearly
differs from that of the burakumin. With these facts in
mind, let us now look at the discrimination the two
groups suffer, focusing on the discriminatory language
applied to them.
In the case of a cook from a buraku working at a primary school in Osaka, the discriminatory words were
written with a marker on the toilet door: "To the doetta
[emphatic form of eta, the kanji form meaning "polluted," used officially in the Edo period] cook: We don't
want to eat anything you have cooked. Go and make a
fire in hell. To the scum of school-lunch cooks" (Buraku
Kaiho Kihon Ho I985:70). The handwriting was apparently that of an adult. Such harassment makes these
people uncomfortable at work and in some cases even
drives them from their jobs. It is quite clear that this
discriminatory graffito is similar in its framework to the
kind of bullying suffered by the boy nicknamed "Threadworm." Whoever wrote it seems to have known about
the custom of years ago whereby the cooking fire and
dishes used by the burakumin were not used by other
people and merchants took money from them in baskets
with long handles and later washed the coins. (Tanaka
[I984:33-39] reports that there are folktales that employ
such "customs.") It is hard to imagine, however, that the
junior-high-school boys who bullied "Threadworm"
were aware of this custom.
In another case, the Buraku Liberation Study Group in
one area of Osaka received a postcard containing the
message: "Expel the yottsu [literally "four," this term is
said to come from the slaughtering of four-legged ani-

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MIHASHI

mals, which was the occupation of many burakumin,

but its real origin is unknown]. You people are the cancer of society. Kill yourselves. You're useless. You're
outcasts. We'll leave no stone unturned until we find

you" (BurakuKaihoKihon Ho i985:230).

The postcard,

signed "Kanto District Personnel Section, Yottsu Expulsion Society," was mailed in the Kanto District (Tokyo
and the surrounding prefectures),5 but since the term
yottsu is used mainly in the Kansai District (Osaka and
the surrounding prefectures) the sender may have come
from there. Whereas the graffito earlier mentioned used
the words "scum" and "hell," here it is the name of a
disease, in addition to the word "outcasts," that is used
as a metaphor.
Graffiti describing burakumin as "dangerous" are seen
throughout the country. The expression "Kill yourself"
is often used in bullying as well, even when it does not
go so far as a mock funeral. "We'll leave no stone unturned until we find you" expresses a feeling that may
equally well be associated with a search for some bacteria as with the determination to search for and expel
from his job anyone of buraku origin.
The concept of pollution as expressed in connection
with the cook is more often expressed through action
than through words. In a case that occurred in Kumagaya
City, an engagement was broken off by the father of the
bride-to-be when he found out that the prospective
groom came from a buraku. The research of the Buraku
Liberation League does not tell us what change in feelings the bride-to-be experienced, but it is reported that
when the young man went to find out the reason for the
sudden annulment his former fiancee rejected him at the
gate and shouted to her family, "Sprinkle the salt!"6
(Buraku Kaiho Kihon Ho I985:36-38).
Persistent crank calls were made to the members of
the Buraku Liberation League of Kaizuka City with such
taunts as "You people are chonko [a term of abuse
derived from Chdsen-jin (Korean)-similar to "Jap"for
"Japanese"], aren't you?" or "Aren't you guys burakumin?" or "You're Koreans. Go and check in at the municipal office" or "Do you want me to find you a good

Symbolism of Discrimination

IS23

for that used by school bullies. Consequently, a reconsideration of its content is called for. It would seem that,
just as in bullying, the abuse directed at the burakumin
is merely normative; the person using the language connected with disease or with other groups subjected to
discrimination is not doing so driven by something indescribable in his subconscious that distinguishes this
world from the surrounding chaos (in a sense, belongs to
both the periphery of this world and chaos) but is merely
connecting two things that carry inferior marking.
The borderland between this world and chaos that the
burakumin traditionally inhabited is approached with
ambivalence, and because of this the burakumin of the
past resorted to the performing arts to appeal to the
symbolic cosmology of the discriminators (Yamaguchi
I976a, b); Miyata (I976) has shown that people who
were discriminated against in the past were believed to
possess the power of bringing the dead back to life. The
tanning of hides, one of the main industries under the
feudal system, may have been despised by the people of
the Edo period as polluted, but pollution surrounded
them in daily life. Farmers could not avoid contact with
eta when dealing with the horses and cows indispensable to farming. This relationship has gradually disappeared in the last IOO years or so and had been diminishing since even earlier. In I87I, the Liberation Ordinance
abolished the use of the term eta and at the same time
annulled the eta's monopoly on the disposal of dead
horses and cows, thrusting them into the midst of a
monetary economy. As a result, contact on a daily business level between burakumin and others was broken
off.
It might be said that modemization gradually removed
the notion of the border between this world and chaos
from people's subconscious. It must be kept in mind that
a historical background of modemization underlies the
normative nature of terms of abuse. The medium that
brought about the modernization was writing, and this
in tum was the main reason for the decline of the street

shows (NakazawaI977) and beggingminstrels (Okiura

I984) that were the main means of expression and occasion for festivities for the eta and the hinin (the other
Here the metaphors are Koreans and the mentally ill. group of lowly people in the Edo period). Moreover, writThere are a number of reports of the confusion of ing was taught in schools. The establishment of primary
burakumin with Koreans. A gang of junior-high-school schools in poverty-stricken areas was delayed, and the
delinquents is reported to have repeatedly shouted discriminatory attitude of the teacher toward pupils
"Chonko, Chonko!" at a boy on the street in the buraku from the buraku in the classroom was enough to disarea, apparently in the belief that the buraku was a Ko- courage children even if they went to school. The fact
rean community (Buraku Kaiho Kihon Ho I985: I I7).
that literacy programs are being carried out with middleOne is forced to admit, from what we have seen so far, aged and old adults to this day is evidence of this. The
that the abusive language directed at the burakumin re- way in which terms of abuse are being used today is
peatedly employs marking as negative or inferior and illustrated by the report from Okayama Prefecture that a
that the framework for it is almost exactly the same as junior-high-school student who was still eating his croquette when the tables were being cleared after lunch
was teased by his classmates. One student threw the
croquette out the window, and another student said to
5. Similar cases of discrimination have been reportedconcerning
"If you do something like that, you're an eta or
him,
buraku in Tokyo.
6. Even today salt is used symbolically in various situations for hinin." Investigation revealed that the student had
purification.
learned from his class on the buraku problem that "the

mental doctor?" (BurakuKaiho Kihon Ho

i985:I2I).

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S24

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Volume 28, Number 4, August-October

words eta and hinin were used in 'discriminating against

someone' and when 'I want to hurt someone,' " and that
was why he had tried it out on his classmate (Buraku
Kaiho Kihon Ho6I985:8I).
At the outset I suggested that the degree of cliscrimination is greater today than in the Edo period. It is also
more covert, and this has much to do with the change in
character of discriminatory language. It is true that customs of that period such as the way money was received
from burakumin were extremely contemptuous. However, in modern times the discriminated-against have
lost their place in the symbolic cosmos of the discriminators: no longer relegated simply to the periphery,
they have been driven outside the culture altogether.
And yet money circulates freely between the two communities. Only the poverty produced by the monetary
economy is shared equally. The use of discriminatory
language is aimed at preventing any upward social mobility on the part of the discriminated-against and expressing hostility toward them. The latter, claiming
their human rights, have begun to fight back and to extend their occupational possibilities, though only little
by little.
Koreans resident in Japan have begun to feel strong
doubts about having to register their fingerprints and
have begun to protest openly the discriminatory treatment they receive. In the last two or three years some
have actually refused to register their fingerprints. The
fingerprint registration system began with the colonization-period notion that foreign residents were potential
criminals. As soon as some refused to register, there
were threatening letters: "You must be satisfied that
you've been arrested for refusing to register. It's natural
that Koreans, of whom quite a number are criminals,
should be made to register their fingerprints. If you don't
like it, go back to Korea, you wicked Koreans, go back to
Korea" (Minzokusabetsu I985:95). The sender of this
letter signed himself "A Pure Japanese." The threat was
directed at someone who took a distinctive action,
namely, refusing to register his or her fingerprint, and
therefore the various metaphors are not to be found here.
Here I will simply point to the fact that many Japanese
still think of even second- and third-generation Koreans,
bom and brought up in Japan, as "foreigners." There is
no doubt that feelings about blood and lineage underlie
the discrimination against burakumin in connection
with marriage and that the same feeling helps to establish the identity of being "Japanese" through the mediation of Koreans.
We have seen the framework of symbolic thinking
that constitutes today's discrimination. The next big
question is whether this framework applies to schoolchildren as well. To begin with, it must be mentioned
that what presents this framework from the outside is
the mass media. Yamaguchi (i983) has analyzed
semiologically the reports made in popular weekly magazines from I978 to I980 on the "Jesus' arc" case and
described how a scapegoat was created in that instance.
From the inside the framework comes from our experience of our own bodies. A graffito found at a junior high

I987

school in Hiroshima Prefecture last year, just after the

students had had a social studies lecture on the feudal
status system, read: "The political system of the Kamakura period-farmers, merchants, manufacturers, eta,
hinin, saliva, gastric juice" (Kaiho Shimbun, March 3I,
i986). The writer, who had apparently not listened
closely to the lecture, distorted its content by this act,
which may be considered a mere play on words, but the
part about saliva and gastric juice has considerable reality in that the intemal parts of the human body, especially its fluids, are being used as metaphors. This carries
a nuance that is absent in the previous examples. What
made the writer think of saliva, which is close to the
surface of the body, and then of gastric juice, which is
deeper inside, was the idea that the eta and the hinin
existed on the periphery of culture and beyond that periphery lay chaos.
In this modem age, if anything presents us with the
notion of chaos it is the human body. Modem powers
have treated the body as existing merely for its use
value. The development of technology has begun to
move more and more of the brainwork outside the body.
Robots in factories dispense with human bodies. In the
public junior high schools, where every student wears
the same uniform and skirt length and even school bags
must meet the school standard, students take on more
chaos as they try to conform (Mihashi I984). Okaniwa
(1i984:I42),

speaking of the pattern of power whereby

modem Japanese society has suppressed various religious groups, argues, "It is, of course, the dynamics of
the principles of emperorship that has penetrated into
the mind of every individual that eliminates shared
power of any other kind. However, fear of the body possessed by a god has been the force that expelled divinity
from the body and in tum concealed, covered, and discriminated against it." Discrimination, then, is a paradox: "By discriminating, one is fulfilled physically, and
that physical fulfillment momentarily manifests the
nature of our bodily existence" (pp. 62-63). Thus,
beneath the abusive language is the determination to
discriminate that, when manifested, provides the discriminator the reversed physical fulfillment.
What exactly is the world of discrimination, which is
reverse physical fulfillment, like? One last case (reported
in Mainichi Shimbun for February 2i, I985) gives us a
dramatic picture: A senior-high-school student whose
left hand was slightly bent because of an accident during
birth had been brought up by his mother, who had encouraged him, telling him "You're not handicapped." He
had, however, always been the target of bullying in
junior high school, although he was no longer. One day,
when no one was watching, he kicked over the wastebasket, stole a girl's school bag and scattered her sanitary
napkins in the hallway, and then posted a message on
the wall by the staircase. It read, "We of the Yamato race
love wars. Buraku and war-these two things will last
forever. Don't sacrifice the school for the problem of
buraku or handicapped people. Handicapped children
are trash. Throw them away. [signed] Hideki T6jo, the
Allied Yamato of the Great Japanese Empire."

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MIHASHI

Comment
ROGER

GOODMAN

Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, Oxford

University, Oxford, England.

Symbolism of Discrimination | S25

kosei) are particularly at risk here (Yokoshima 1977). It

is not the individual child who is at fault but the school
system that protects the group and the group norm. This
is what those like Mouer and Sugimoto (I986) would see
as the institutionalisation of discrimination against the
individual in Japan: the tyranny of the majority. It is a
way in which the majority can create its own identity at
the expense of a created and perceived periphery: small
wonder that the class becomes animated when there is a
case of bullying in it!
Like Mihashi, I have found symbolic analysis extremely useful for understanding the position of Japanese minorities. If I have understood him correctly, however, my approach differs somewhat from his. As he
says, "Those driven to the periphery are anti-order entities and are symbolically ambivalent." The way that
the symbol is interpreted is thus a function of historical
conditions as well as current power relations. It is vitally
important, therefore, that we remember that the concept
of discrimination incorporates both positive and negative discrimination. The way in which an individual or a
group with some quality of "markedness" is interpreted
and interprets himself or itself (the two may be very

I suspect that one of the most important contributions of

Mihashi's paper has been to bring to the attention of a
wider anthropological audience the plight of Koreans
and burakumin in contemporary Japan.' Indeed, many
Japanese themselves, particularly those from the Tokyo
area, remain largely unaware of the extent of the
"burakumin problem," as it is known. The other examples chosen are also particularly interesting. The parents
of Hirofumi Shikagawa have recently brought a court
action against the relevant authorities for their failure to
heed their warnings about their son. The case is seen as a
clash between the Japanese public's distaste for litigiousness, on the one hand, and desire to rid the education
system of bullying, on the other.2 The Jesus' Arc case
and the concept of kegare are also fascinating, and it is a
shame that limitations of space did not allow the author
different)vis-a-vis what Goffman(I979 [I963]) calls the
to explore them further.
Mihashi's attempt to bring school bullying and ethnic "normal" society is related to perceptions of the signifidiscrimination in Japan within the same analytical cance of that "markedness" and the relative power of the
model is extremely bold and, as he is clearly aware, prob- signifier and the signified. In short, the unusual boy in
lematic not only because of differences in scale but also the class may become its leader.
because of the quality of the information available. PiecSuch theories of symbolic discrimination have been
ing together accounts from newspaper reports is far from much discussed (see, e.g., Tumer I974, BourdieuI977,
satisfactory, particularly in the case of bullying, which La Fontaine I972, Firth I973), but their applicationto
(like mother-son incest at the tum of the decade and the specific setting of Japan is limited. Ohnuki-Tiemey
violence against teachers in the period i982-84) has (I984), however, has attempted to relate the perception
something of the appearance of an iatrogenic disorder and treatment of burakumin to different periods of Japa"created" by Japanese journalists.3 Moreover, problems nese history; Yoshida (I98I) has discussed the dual naof evidence aside, I am doubtful of Mihashi's assumption ture of strangers in folk societies. I have found such ideas
that it is "inferiority" which leads to classification as a useful, also, in examining the position of retumees and
stranger. To me this is to put too much of the blame for particularly retumee schoolchildren (kikokushijo) in
the problem on the individual and to excuse the social contemporary Japanese society (Goodman n.d.). Bennett,
system. As Rohlen (I983) and Cummings (I980) have Passin, and McKnight (I958) demonstrated the dialectic
demonstrated, the inherent conflict between competi- between oscillating "open"/"closed" political cultures
tion and ranking in Japanese schools is minimised by the in Japan between I870 and ig5o and the reception accreation of a class group ethic.4 While such a group sys- corded Japanese retuming from overseas. The symbolic
tem has advantages for motivating slower students, it value attached to retumee children today is much more
also creates a very strong inside/outside mentality
complex than the rather clear-cut positive-negative alwhich can quickly lead to very serious problems for the tematives offered by Bennett et al., suggesting perhaps a
isolated individual. Children who change schools (ten- period of significant cultural readjustment and reinterpretation. These children have become symbols in
the
current intemal cultural debate in Japan. Put at its
i. For more information on the Koreansin Japan,see Lee and De
most
simple, it is a debate over the need to be Japanese
Vos (i98i); on the burakumin, see De Vos and Wagatsuma(i982);
on the general status of minorities in Japan,see Minority Rights and the need to be international, over being homogeGroup (i983).
neous or heterogeneous, inward-looking or outward2. See Japan Times Weekly, July 26, I986, p. ii.
It is not surprising in such a context that the
looking.
3. Others have suggested the same idea; see Nada (i986).
treatment
of Japanese children who have been educated
4. The practice of making class groups in Japanhas probablybeen
formulated and examined most explicitly by a group of educators overseas should become such a target for discussion or
known as the All-JapanStudent Life-Guidance Research Group, that the children themselves should be accorded so
which has a paid-upmembership of about 3,000 teachers through- much symbolic importance. That their value is debated
out Japanand an influence that far exceeds that number. Fora full
exposition of its theory, see Zenseiken J6niniinkai (I975). In es- in the context of Japanese education, itself much in the
sence, the theory claims to be a left-wing adaptationof the ideas of limelight in recent years, only adds to the significance of
the Soviet educator Makarenkoto a Japanesecontext.
the way in which they are interpreted. For some, their

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S26

I CURRENT

ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume

28,

Number 4, August-October

I987

in the case have decided to manipulate the mainstream

values of prejudice against returnee schoolchildren,
while those perhaps slightly more peripheral to the debate have tried to invoke positive connotations for such
children (as internationalists, the current buzzword in
Japanese society), in the mode of "Black is beautiful."
Though Mihashi's approach is suggestive, his argument is not always clear and perhaps leaves too many
questions unanswered. It would be interesting, for example, to examine the phenomenon of bullying in the
light of Freudian ideas concerning the projection of personal inadequacies onto an unwilling victim. While
analysis of symbolic oppositions can be extremely useful, there is always the danger that too all-embracing an
application may discredit rather than enhance the approach.

overseas education and by definition themselves, since

as individuals they are definitely peripheral to the debate, make them "young internationalists" (minikokusaijin), the vanguard of a new Japan, with their
multicultural and multilingual skills, the leaders of the
next generation. To others, the ideas and values they
represent are a threat to the values of Japaneseness that
need to be fostered among the country's youth for the
survival of the nation. The significance of the debate
itself will have to be left to history to judge, but the
significance of the returnee schoolchildren in the debate
is already attested to in the amount of literature produced and money spent and the general ferocity of educators' and academics' discussions.
Another important element in the context of "markedness" (a more neutral term than "discrimination") is,
of course, that of power. If they have access to power,
those with the marked quality can play a part in the
negotiation of their symbolic value. In the case of returnee schoolchildren, it is significant that their parents
are among the most elite members of the society (businessmen, diplomats, journalists, etc). These parents felt
that they were being discriminated against on their return to Japan from overseas postings (Kitsuse, Murase,
and Yamamura i984) by the fact that their children were
unable to enter the top universities from which they
themselves had graduated and thus the family status
would fall in the next generation, meaning less prestige
and possibly less material security for them in their own
old age. Stressing (and through the construction of a research "problem" and literature "proving") that their
children were "handicapped," they forced the govemment to set up a special system of schooling (ukeirek6).
Since social class in Japan is perceived as determined by
education via a system in which everyone is believed to
have an equal chance, any idea of elitism in Japanese
education is anathema. The schools therefore have been
set up in the guise of being for children with "special
needs." Nevertheless, the private ukeirekd have quickly
become extremely elitist, resembling, if only superficially, British public schools. Combined with the existence in many universities, including the top ones, of a
special quota for admitting children who have lived
overseas (not unlike that for scheduled castes in India),
this is directly related to the enormous competition
among children who have not been overseas to gain
places in some of the ukeirekd and a rather small but
still significant recent trend for mothers to take their
children overseas, while their husbands stay in Japan,
just so that their children can qualify as returnees. The
power involved in this "manipulation" of the concept of
"discrimination" is evident when we compare the
amounts of money spent per capita on returnee, Korean
Japanese, and burakumin education by central government.5 It is interesting that those most directly involved

Goodman raises three issues: He questions my placing

the problem of bullying in the schools on the same level
as discrimination against minorities within a cultural
anthropological model of analysis. He criticizes my analysis-and this is the basis for his first question-for excusing the social system that generates this bullying.
Then, in the light of these questions, he expounds his
own theory on the issue of returnee schoolchildren.
As to the first point, discrimination against a given
group is not sustained by a particular prejudice as if in
one-to-one correspondence. Rather, it exists within a
broader frame of reference including discrimination
against multiple groups. Although the same analysis can
be applied to discrimination in Western Europe or the
U.S.A., the ethnic groups of those areas are visible
through physical features and distinct life-styles. In Japan, where the burakumin constitute a minority born
from within, where Korean residents can hardly be
distinguished by their physical features, and where
Japanese is a mother tongue for most second- and thirdgeneration Koreans, it becomes a key to the understanding of discrimination. Taking these aspects into account,
bullying among school-age children cannot be dissociated from discrimination. Without forgetting the difference in scale between the two problems and their historical settings, there is still a substantial basis for
placing the two on the same plane for cultural anthropological analysis. If my analysis proves effective,
bullying in the schools will have to be tackled in reference to the social structure that has become the ground

S. It is difficult to get exact figures, but the following sources give a

rough idea of the financial relationship between central government and the respective groups:for returneeschoolchildren,Mombusho Kyoiku (i985); for Korean-Japanese,Rohlen (i98i); and for

burakumin, Shimahara(i984), which does note a considerableincrease in financial supportfor burakumin children but at a level far
below the per capita support for returnee schoolchildren.

Reply
OSAMU

MIHASHI

Tokyo 194, Japan.

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MIHASHI

for discrimination if any solution to the problem is to be

found. The intuitive perception that school bullying is
closely related to discrimination has long existed among
schoolteachers interested in discrimination against burakumin and Korean residents, and my paper is influenced by the questions they have been raising. Furthermore, I am well aware that in the real world the cultural
anthropological model of the folk society in its original
form no longer exists. I have taken this into account and
have made an effort to discuss its impact on the marked
individual.
As to the second point, I did not discuss the problems
of the social system in detail because I was primarily
concerned with the decoding of discriminatory language.
This is by no means to excuse the social system. The
main problem is identifying the social system that generates bullying and its effects. Goodman sees the group
system as playing this role, but this is not entirely convincing. True, this system has sometimes had the effect
of aggravating the bullying. If bullying were inherent in
the system, however, it would have become a problem
much earlier, for this system has been in operation for
the past 25 years. (Incidentally, it was not in effect at the
school Shikagawa had attended, which I took as a model
case.) We need to look for a broader, more pervasive institutional factor as the ground for discrimination. I see
such a factor in the increase in administrative control
that is now spreading to all corners of Japanese society.
The administered society (kanri-shakai) has arisen out
of intensive industrialization. Triggered by a recurrence
of school vandalism, this trend overpowered the educational scene in the mid-I97os, and school administration today can be said to perform the function of preventing school violence. Detailed restrictions on dress,
hair-style, hair length, skirt length, shoe type, and personal belongings are strictly enforced in the school for
this reason. It is needless to mention that more rules
produce more violators of rules. The inside/outside mentality intensifies as school administrators vie with one
another in suppressing school vandalism. It is difficult to
determine to what extent schoolchildren perceive this
administrative control as oppressive. At least we can say
that it forces them to live in a world in which labeling
and marking are common; the habit of arbitrarily marking others as "inferior" is being fostered in their daily
lives.
It must be acknowledged, of course, that the tightening of control not only receives a generally positive appraisal from parents and school-related persons as a deterrent to school vandalism but also filters into the
minds of the schoolchildren themselves to shape a positive psychological response to it. The logic of the administrator grips the individual in such a way that each
person begins to administer him- or herself, its ultimate
form being the self-repression of the body. This is why I
referred to the body as presenting us with the notion of
chaos. Here I limit myself to pointing to the symbolic
significance for the social system of this compliance.
A positive assessment of being "good" naturally goes
along with acceptance of the administrative system, but

Symbolism of Discrimination

IS27

being "good" has additional meaning. It is, in a symbolic

sense, an acknowledgment of one's "trainability" or capacity for self-administration. This "trainability" becomes the major factor in assessment for employment
by enterprises with the lifetime-employment system
and a wage scale based on seniority. Although there is a
growing demand for workers with particular qualifications, the majority of enterprises adhere to seniority as
the determinant of wages. In this context, a long educational career represents a high degree of "trainability."
The reason that burakumin or Koreans are turned down
upon application for employment seems to be intimately linked to this "trainability" factor. Even though
the individual coming from a group subjected to discrimination may be highly educated and susceptible to
training in the objective sense, belonging to that group
prevents him or her from being considered simply as an
individual. Those who hold a clear-cut identity or group
consciousness cause administrative difficulties for the
enterprise by introducing "social problems." Exclusion
from the lifetime-employment system seriously jeopardizes one's career and economic status. It is these characteristics of the system that I have had in mind in
pointing to a similarity between bullying and discrimination. Of course there is a constant need for middlerange hypotheses with regard to bullying such as Goodman has attempted to offer, but at the same time it is
necessary to examine the drastic change in children's
environment in a highly industrialized society from a
sociohistorical perspective. The collapse of teacherand adult-authority and the crumbling myth of a pure,
innocent childhood are not uniquely Japanese phenomena. Bullying in Japan may be yet another response by
children sensitive to the major social changes of the
epoch.
Goodman's analysis on returnee schoolchildren is
stimulating. When the bullied child protests to the
teacher, he or she is often exposed to further bullying for
utilizing weakness to manipulate the powerful. It literally results in the engulfment of the mark inflicted
upon that child. On the contrary, the parents of returnees have successfully appealed to the government to
solve these problems, but whether this involves a " 'manipulation' of the concept of 'discrimination' as Goodman asserts remains an empirical question in each case.
Retumee schoolchildren may represent either "young
internationalists" or "a threat to the values of Japaneseness" to parents and other adults, but it is well
known that children who combine these qualities are
often bullied at school as strangers in the classroom.
Even for those in senior high school or university lucky
enough to find an ukeirek6 place on their return, identifying with either of these definitions presents a problem far more complex than it seems to the adult eye.
This is all the more so for those who return to primary
and junior high schools, who have trouble understanding
why their thought patterns and behavior should appear
strange to their classmates and, even when they do
understand, have difficulty coping with the situation.
The pupil whose English is better than the teacher's is

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S28 1 CURRENT

Volume 28, Number 4, August-October

ANTHROPOLOGY

apt to be considered something of a nuisance from the

very first day by the teacher him- or herself. Only those
who are able to grasp the full implications of this awkward situation will find the way to individual survival.
Besides, it is simplistic to consider the returnees a homogeneous group. Those who return from Europe or the
U.S.A. acquire a certain amount of power owing to the
high esteem for Western culture in Japan, while those
returning from Southeast Asia, for example, are prone to
bullying and name-calling ("underdeveloped primitive,"
"You stink! ", "zanryiU-koji"[the last a term for the Japanese nationals left in mainland China during the turmoil
of Japan's defeat in World War II]).Asia, in the minds of
Japanese children, symbolizes the obscure ages of the
past that modern Japan has left behind. Since I am not
well informed on the debate over the definition of "internationalist," I cannot provide Goodman with more
useful data, but aside from the inward-looking/outwardlooking antithesis it is important to examine whether
"outward" indicates Europe and the U.S.A. or Asia.
I myself consider the comparison between bullying
and discrimination on a common plane from a cultural
anthropological viewpoint worthy of further discussion.
I greatly appreciate Goodman's comments and hope to
receive further constructive criticism. I also hope that
the social problems of Japan will receive more exposure
through this kind of debate between committed researchers.

J. W.,

R. K. MC KNIGHT.

AND

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I958. In search of identity: The Japanese overseas

scholar in America and Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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