Dowa education has played a vital role to improve both the quantity and quality of educational opportunities for Buraku children, to nurture anti-discriminatory attitudes and human rights awareness among educators and students in general through schooling and out-of-school education, and to stimulate other forms of human rights education movement to grow and network with each other. In other words, Dowa education has been a driving force to advance the human rights education initiative in Japan.
This picture has evolved against the historical background in modern Japan where the country's quality of human rights culture was first seriously challenged by the largest and most crudely discriminated-against minority population, namely the Burakumin.
The Levelers' Declaration of 1922 has been called the "first human rights declaration in Japan." The Levelers Association or "Suiheisha," was founded to initiate a self-directed liberation movement by the Burakumin themselves. The declaration said in reference to what had happened following the government Emancipation Edict of 1871 that formerly declared the end of the feudal class system, "In the past half century, various reform efforts undertaken on our behalf by many people have not yielded any appreciable results. Previous movements, though seemingly motivated by compassion for humanity, have actually ruined many of our brothers and sisters. Thus, it is now imperative for us to initiate within ourselves a collective movement by which we shall liberate ourselves through our respect for humanity."
Its clear message of calling for a self-directed liberation movement and perspective to relate the specific Buraku initiative to the universal theme of respecting humanity have made this declaration a milestone in the quest for human rights in Japan.
However, the innovative initiative did not grow in a form of an abstract idea but was lived in reality. The weight of Buraku discrimination was so overwhelming in the Japanese political and cultural context that struggles to challenge it had to be powerful and total.
The declaration also said "Our ancestors were pursuers of freedom and equality, and executors of these principles. They were the victims of contemptible caste policies, and courageous martyrs of their occupations. In recompense for skinning animals, they were skinned of the respect due humans. For tearing out the hearts of animals, their human hearts were torn apart, and despicable ridicule was spat upon them. Yet all through these cursed nights of nightmares, human dignity ran deep in their blood. Indeed we, who were born of this blood, are now living in an era when humans are willing to take over the gods. The time has come for the oppressed to throw off their stigma. The time has come for the martyrs to receive the blessing for their crown of thorns. The time has come when we can take pride in being Eta. We must never shame our ancestors nor profane humanity by demeaning words or cowardly deeds. We know very well how cold the coldness of human society can be, and how warm it is when one cares for another. We therefore from the bottom of our heart revere and pursue the warmth and light of human life."
The deeper the valley, the higher the mountain. The harsher and more total the discrimination is, the more resilient and thorough the resistance can grow.
The Buraku liberation movement has been a major driving force of human rights in Japan. Similarly, Dowa education has significantly encouraged the human rights education initiative in Japan.
The major strengths of Dowa education can be summarized in the following ways:
First, Dowa education has been defined as a process to educate self-directed and transformable individuals: those who can take pride in and be confident about themselves even if they belong to vulnerable groups facing discrimination and oppression, and those who can empathize with the suffering of the oppressed and engage in social actions to create a discrimination-free society.
Second Buraku community intervention has presented a model demonstrating how community experiences and resources can be powerful agents of educational transformation. Usually, schools are regarded as a sphere separate from the reality outside. However, in Dowa education, the function of schooling, the nature of teacher expectations and teacher-student relationships, the content of textbooks, the standards of evaluation of student performance and other matters have been critically analyzed against the reality of discrimination characterized by an unequal distribution of power, wealth and opportunity. Buraku community intervention in school affairs has contributed greatly to the fundamental transformation of school practices.
Third, an inclusive philosophy has been always honored and deeply embedded in Dowa school practices: meritocratic tracking has been avoided; disabled students have been integrated; multiple intelligence and diverse potentials of students have been respected etc.
However, because Buraku discrimination was so overwhelming, Dowa education has had a number of weaknesses, too. For instance, the principle of learning from the reality of Buraku discrimination was emphasized so much that it was often translated as synonymous to communicating sad experiences of discrimination repeatedly to non-Buraku children without effective pedagogical frameworks; Buraku history teaching was emphasized but the need to develop a comprehensive Dowa education curriculum covering all subjects and non-subject matters was not taken seriously; The commitment of teachers was always discussed but the responsibilities of parents and communities in the children's education were often overlooked; Models of effective Dowa education in schools where no Buraku communities are located nearby have been slow to develop. In addition, the concept of "educating through role models" has not been well-incorporated into school practices partly because a group orientation has been strongly emphasized and partly because the nature of Buraku discrimination makes it harder to reveal one's Buraku identity, which often leads to various forms of disadvantages.
In Kansai and most prefectures in western Japan, Dowa education has been implemented with strong support from local governments. However, this has not been the case in eastern Japan. There are wide local variations in the scope and scale of Dowa education in practice.
Dowa education has been more elaborately and extensively programmed in elementary and junior high-schools, but not so much in high schools, colleges, universities and in preschool education.
On the other hand Dowa education has often fought a lonely battle without effectively collaborating with other anti-discrimination and human rights-oriented groups and individuals. There has even been a tendency among some educators to regard Dowa education as the only authentic education for human rights in Japan while criticizing other initiatives as intrinsically assimilatory.
Dowa educators did not often communicate effectively their valuable experiences and perspectives to other educators, scholars and the general public, even if they were also democratic-minded pursuers of human rights. As a result, unnecessary barriers were erected between them, hampering productive collaboration.
We now observe growing circles of human rights-oriented education in Japan. They are in action in the form of ethnic education for Koreans and other foreigners, education f or the disabled, development education, intercultural education, environmental education, sex education, etc. Their objectives are different, but they share the same concerns of respecting human rights and of appreciating differences. Innovative curricula and teaching strategies have been developed by these various organizations.
Amnesty International and other NGOs are actively expanding programs of human rights education in Japan. These stimuli and inputs from non-governmental sectors are gradually transforming a scene of human rights education in Japan that was mostly school-based in the past.
The United Nation's Decade for Human Rights Education started in 1995. The UN ~Secretary General defined the concept of human rights education as "education, training, dissemination and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through the imparting of knowledge and skills and the molding of attitudes and which are directed to: (a) strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; (b) full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity; (c) promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups; (d) enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society; and (e) furtherance of the activities of the United Nations system for the maintenance of peace."
The UN Decade for Human Rights provides a good opportunity for Dowa education to consolidate synergetic networks of anti-discrimination and human rights education, both domestically and internationally.
Dowa education in Japan is now actively joining this UN initiative by sharing experiences of such a broad array of human rights education efforts in the belief that Dowa education, so far little known overseas, can contribute to other initiatives in promoting anti-discrimination/human rights education in the world
We sincerely call for an active sharing of information and experiences with institutions, organizations, groups and individuals that hate all forms of discrimination and respect humanity. For further information, please contact the following:
Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute,
1-6-12, Kuboyoshi, Naniwa-ku, Osaka 556-0028, Japan
Tel: +81-6-6568-7337
Fax: +81 -6-6568 -0714