Prewar Buraku liberation and denunciation

The word kyūdan has never been restricted to use within or about Buraku activism, although it is arguably most commonly identified with this group. The word was used, for example, in an 1878 Japanese translation of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, to render the expression “inquire into” (William Reference William1878: 55 koma). It was also, of course, a word utilized in left-wing scholarship to reference impeachment of the government (see, for example, some of the issues of the left-wing journal Susume, such as Itō Reference Itō1927). That said, the word also became strongly associated with Buraku activism, possibly even favored by early Suiheisha activists for the strong sense of rectification it seemed to promise (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 91). Burakumin formed their first real grassroots liberation organization in 1922 called the Suiheisha or National Leveler’s Association. The first Article in the 1922 Suiheisha platform document read: “When people express their insulting intent toward us by calling us eta, special communities, and the like, we will thoroughly denounce (kyūdan) them” (Watabe and Akisada Reference Watabe and Akisada1973: 27; or for a differently worded translation, see Neary Reference Neary1989: 85). A 1924 text by Sano Kazuo, one of the first academics to critically assess the practice, introduced some of the logics of what he termed sabetsu kyūdan or “denunciation of discrimination” (Sano Reference Sano1924).

Sano described kyūdan as the “first step” in the Suiheisha movement’s demand for the abolition of discriminatory treatment. Drawing on statements made by the Suiheisha, Sano defined kyūdan as a confrontation with individuals who, due to prejudice or misunderstanding, have insulted, used derogatory expressions toward, or acted in discriminatory ways against Burakumin (Reference Sano1924: 121–2). The intended goal, he argued, was to force the discriminators to reflect on their own actions. These confrontations were to serve as a “model” for the awakening of society at large. Sano was, however, critical of them, arguing that they tended to cross the boundary of what might be called legitimate protest, conducted based on insufficient evidence and embracing coercive tactics. He drew on a number of cases to try to demonstrate his point, including a 1922 sabetsu kyūdan incident at Nara’s Taisho Village (Sano Reference Sano1924: 124–5, 134–5).

In May 1922, students from Nara’s Kobayashi Buraku community faced discrimination in relation to a cleanup at Taishō Village’s higher elementary school (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 41). The Kobayashi Youth Group, led by Kimura Kyōtarō and several others, protested to the school, demanding an end to discriminatory practices and the removal of those responsible. The following day, a large Burakumin demonstration took place at the school, resulting in confrontation with school and village officials. Protesters apparently withdrew from the scene after some initial physical interactions. Fearing retaliation, the Kobayashi community prepared for a potential attack by neighboring villagers, but none materialized. Kimura recounted later in life that ultimately several hundred police were mobilized, and when representatives from Kobayashi went to the police station to make statements, some (including Kimura) were charged with and jailed for rioting (Reference Kimura1975: 9–11).

The Taisho Village incident occurred soon after the establishment of the Suiheisha and became a kind of template for activism that guided thinking about the possibilities and problems surrounding prewar Buraku political action, thus drawing the ire of people such as Sano. But it did not do so in isolation. Another large incident in Aichi later in 1922 followed a similar pattern but also introduced new tactics and dimensions as well. The incident involved a man entering Buraku-owned land while working, making a discriminatory remark, and becoming the target of collective confrontation. The Suiheisha quickly became involved and gathered many Buraku residents who collectively subjected the man to a denunciation process and made numerous concrete demands about how he should publicly demonstrate his contrition. This case, reconstructed by historians through court records, revealed the approach the community took to challenge discrimination, including mass mobilization, coercive pressure, and forced confrontation. Like the Taisho Village incident, however, it also ended with conviction of five Suiheisha members (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 41–2).

“Status reversal,” borrowing from Susan Pharr, may well have played an important part in these incidents (Reference Pharr1990: 125–6, 140). There is a sense in which such Buraku confrontations through kyūdan were deliberate, decisive moves, commitments not to back down in the face of discriminatory words and actions—in a sense to “turn the table” on people who were not conscious of or fazed by their own bigotry. But beyond that, the incidents also demonstrate collective outrage, strong moral criticism arising from within communities themselves in relation to glaring acts of Buraku discrimination. Behind this was recognition that Buraku discrimination, while perhaps initially occurring between individuals in the folds of everyday life, also involved communities marked by unequal power and access to resources. Buraku groups certainly built regional networks through the Suiheisha movement and local organizations like youth groups to defend themselves against more institutional forms of discrimination and injustice. Yet, institutions themselves do not appear to be the central target of kyūdan at this early stage, but the people responsible for making the utterances and performing the actions. And it is clear that communities deemed the actions essential, with the help of the Suiheisha, despite the high personal costs they could entail, including imprisonment and financial hardship.

Subsequent criticism of kyūdan did, however, emerge both from those close to the Suiheisha movement, as well as key activists within the movement itself, leading to debate about what role they should play in the future liberation movement and how they might be better imagined and framed. The yūwa (reconciliation) activist Yamamoto Masao, for example, who had considerable ties to people in the Suiheisha, became increasingly critical of the practice in the 1920s, arguing that it had reached a “deadlock” (ikizumari) (Reference YamamotoYamamoto 2008 (1925–6): 86–7). This sentiment was also reflected within internal Suiheisha debates, leading to disagreements about the ongoing validity of the practice, as well as attempts to reimagine and reframe its rationale (Upham Reference Upham1987: 82).

Later high-profile denunciation campaigns also played a part in reshaping the direction of the practice. In particular, the Takamatsu District Court Discrimination Condemnation Struggle (1933), described by Bayliss as “the largest and most successful kyūdan campaign in Suiheisha history,” broadened the range of possibilities and expectations associated with them (Reference Bayliss2013: 269). This denunciation campaign carried out by the Suiheisha (National Levelers Association) originated in relation to an egregious case of judicial discrimination. The 1933 struggle responded to charges brought against stepbrothers from Buraku communities in relation to abduction (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 100–5). A man from Kagawa prefecture, Hisamoto Yoneichi, proposed marriage to a woman from a non-Buraku background in Okayama, Ishihara Masae, in December 1932. Masae agreed to the marriage provided certain conditions were met, including obtaining permission from her father. Masae’s father, however, not only objected to the marriage, but reported her “kidnapping” to the police by Yoneichi and his stepbrother, Yamamoto Yukitarō. Charged with this crime, a trial ensued the following year, and various arguments were raised about deliberate deceptions on the part of the brothers, including in relation to their Buraku backgrounds. The Takamatsu District Court also highlighted this point in its rulings during the trial and at the time of sentencing (Neary Reference Neary1989: 167–8).

The verdict prompted a significant and aggressive response from the Suiheisha, which justifiably viewed the judicial ruling itself as an act of discrimination. This, of course, occurred in a period when groups like the Suiheisha were affected by arrests and state crackdowns on political activity, yet it was nonetheless organized as a mass protest campaign against a court decision that involved discrimination. As mentioned above, this was the largest denunciation campaign (kyūdan tōsō) launched by the Suiheisha in the 1930s and highlights the continued effort of the movement to challenge discriminatory practices, even in a highly restrictive political environment. The Suiheisha successfully challenged the verdict. Yoneichi and his brother were released from prison, and the presiding judge was removed from his position. The case in many ways was a victory for the Suiheisha as they expressed their demands for self-determination and freedom from discrimination in the face of biased judicial interpretation. Certain aspects of the kyūdan, including a “petition march,” were later to be revived in the 1960s in the push for national measures targeting the improvement of Buraku areas and the elimination of discrimination (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 102–3).

Kyūdan as administrative struggle

The 1952 “All Romance Incident” in Kyoto became a strong catalyst for the postwar Buraku liberation movement and has generally been treated as a watershed campaign (Hankins Reference Hankins2014a, 136–7; Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 165). Asada Zennosuke led a group of activists in the National Committee for Buraku Liberation (NCBL) on this first concentrated postwar kyūdan campaign. In this case, the NCBL responded to a story published in the magazine All Romance called “Special Buraku,” written by a Kyoto public servant, where a Kyoto Buraku area was described as a place of poverty and crime (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 165–6; Hankins Reference Hankins2014a: 137–8). This led Asada, who had fostered close wartime contacts within the municipal government, to instigate a denunciation campaign against the author and publisher for this “discriminatory story,” an action immediately followed by a campaign against the Kyoto Municipal Government for their role in the reproduction of discrimination against Burakumin through “administrative stagnation” (Asada Reference Asada1969: 192–3).

Kyūdan in this campaign differed from that described by Sano and recounted by Kimura, although it did have small points of connection with the movement against the Takamatsu District Court. The articles of discrimination conceptualized and authored by Asada and Nakagawa Tadatsugu (a Kyoto Municipal Government Official) in 1952 made this point abundantly clear (Kyoto burakushi kenkyūjo 1987: 537–58). The notion that “discrimination” existed as an abstract idea was rejected; such sentiments, they argued, were mere reflections of actual material discrimination that existed in Japanese society that the state had failed to do anything about. Kyūdan became a denunciation of stagnant government administration (referred to as “administrative struggle” [gyōsei tōsō]), making the “All Romance Denunciation Campaign” a substantially different denunciation of discrimination than those that had occurred earlier. The articles attempted to make clear that denunciation was not about moral criticism or punishing individuals but rather exposing social reality and demanding administrative responsibility (Kyoto burakushi kenkyūjo 1987: 537–58, esp. 537–44).

Yet in an important sense, the “All Romance Incident” still mobilized kyūdan as a kind of public moral criticism of officialdom, for its failure to use its power for the good of Burakumin. A story that may have previously simply elicited a protest targeting an author and publisher was leveraged to target local government bureaucracy to elicit acknowledgment of political malfeasance and material responses, including budgets from the state. An inactive or stagnant approach to combating the material effects of Buraku discrimination was framed as a moral deficiency that needed to be confronted by state power by working together with the Buraku Liberation League (BLL), renamed as such in 1955. Furthermore, the fact that this was a strategic maneuver that sought to make gains specifically for Burakumin is clear from later critical scholarly analysis of the incident. As Kim Chong-Mi explained in her penetrating critique of this case, the setting in the problematic story was in fact a community of resident Koreans in Japan, and the kyūdan campaign (and later scholarship) concealed this fact, constructing the movement as if only Japanese Buraku people had been discriminated against (Kim Reference Kim1994: 543–84).

During the 1950s, other significant denunciation campaigns emerged that followed this model, such as a push in 1952 to have a local assemblyman ousted from office for discriminating against a local Burakumin lawmaker in Wakayama prefecture (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 135–36). These successes built on the momentum gained from the “All Romance Denunciation Campaign.” Of course, as Yamamoto Takaki has noted, further contextualization of the “All Romance Denunciation Campaign” is essential (Reference Yamamoto2006). It matters that it took place during the final year of the Occupation. The close, established relationship between Asada and municipal officials, moreover, as well as internal political divisions within the municipal government that were rising to the surface, require further disentangling to make better sense of this kyūdan campaign.

Kyūdan and the politics of absolute gain

Kyūdan campaigns from the 1960s became common and took place in relation to a broad range of issues. The historical context for Buraku kyūdan during the 1960s was characterized by the Buraku Liberation movement’s transition from local activism to a powerful national political force, securing landmark government legislation while simultaneously facing deep internal ideological schisms and continued social discrimination. The denunciation campaigns of the 1960s were conducted by the BLL, building upon a strategy solidified in the previous decade, where kyūdan was coupled with demanding government funding for community improvements.

If the “All Romance Denunciation Campaign” charted a new course for Buraku liberation politics, then the 1969 Special Measures Law (SML) targeting Buraku communities was largely seen by the BLL as a direct outcome of these earlier kyūdan efforts. They were seen as proving to be a highly effective means of engaging in liberation politics, even while voices from both inside and outside the movement came to question their ethical legitimacy and legality. It is possible to point here to any number of high-profile cases involving kyūdan during the 1960s and 1970s, whether in relation to the famous “Sayama Trial Denunciation Struggle” or the “Buraku Addresses List Denunciation Campaign” (1975) (Yagi Reference Yagi1976: 172–83; Murakoshi Reference Murakoshi1991: 74–81). The Sayama Trial Denunciation Struggle, in fact, can be said to be the longest-running series of denunciation campaigns in postwar Japan as it has now been fought for over half a century and continues even though Ishikawa Kazuo passed away in early 2025 (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 113–5; Kurokawa Reference Kurokawa and Amos2026).

The Sayama Trial Denunciation Struggle fundamentally targeted the judicial system and state authority, making the case a national symbol of discrimination. The campaign centered on securing the exoneration of Ishikawa, a Buraku man falsely arrested and convicted in the 1963 Sayama incident. While the denunciation campaigns only really began in earnest at the beginning of the 1970s, the BLL has organized massive public protests to frame the case as a symbol of discrimination by the courts and the broader public for more than half a century. The struggle involved denunciation sessions against those deemed prejudicial, negotiation sessions with the government, and large public demonstrations. The case remains a focal point of postwar Buraku politics and the BLL has regularly leveraged the case in their engagement with international human rights institutions, arguing that the unfair use of state authority and judicial bias constituted a gross human rights violation (Kurokawa 2026).

The denunciation cases that have probably received the widest coverage in Anglophone circles, however, are the Yata Incident of 1969 and the Yōka High School Incident of 1974 (see, for example, Rohlen Reference Rohlen1976; Upham Reference Upham1980: 58; Upham Reference Upham1987: 85–96; Pharr Reference Pharr1990: 75–144). The Yata Incident of 1969, the same year as the first SML was passed, involved a denunciation campaign against schoolteachers who had publicly supported a candidate during a teacher’s union meeting that the local branch of the BLL believed had issued a discriminatory pamphlet. The BLL participants were also angered by the refusal of the accused to turn up for a scheduled kyūdan meeting. Eventually, officials of the Yata branch of the BLL were involved in physically removing the teachers from their school, detaining them under the watch of a large group of Yata-based BLL activists, and subjecting them to a range of problematic behaviors including threats.

This kyūdan took the idea of kyūdan and administrative struggle to previously uncharted waters, while also symbolizing the sheer depth of the rupture that had emerged between the BLL and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 96). From the latter’s perspective, the BLL under Asada Zennosuke’s leadership had evolved into an organization intent on making absolute gains. The earlier 1958 BLL dictum of “Any problems that arise in Buraku communities on a daily basis and that are detrimental to Burakumin or to the Buraku community are discrimination” began to seriously impact the nature of activism and the practice of kyūdan under Asada’s leadership (Sumida Reference Sumida2024: 45). The BLL under Asada had been working to remove Communist Party influence during the late 1960s, through various means and measures, and this case was in an important sense an escalation and extension of the field of struggle to schoolyards within areas that had a strong BLL presence. Based on this case, as well as subsequent ones in Suita Junior High School in 1972, Tode Commercial High School in 1973 and particularly Yōka High School in 1974, a new pattern for kyūdan began to take shape under Asada’s leadership of the BLL.

In the background of these conflicts there was of course a series of battles being fought over the nature and future of Buraku liberation activism. Political tensions and divisions in the 1960s, particularly in relation to issues such as which candidates the BLL should support in elections, and how to respond to the Council Report for Dōwa Measures, formed the backdrop for increasingly hostile disagreements (Reber Reference Reber1999: 310). The passing of the BLL’s key leader Matsumoto Jiichirō, as well as the prospect of having to work more closely with a conservative government on special measures, generated considerable tensions with the BLL (Upham Reference Upham1987: 91). And as the BLL came under the control of Asada Zennosuke, he developed and advocated theories and practices which many found highly controversial. The question of the legitimacy and necessity of violence in protest and revolutionary struggle, a bigger ethical theme within the political struggles of the time, also became a key factor in JCP rejection of kyūdan (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 101; Upham Reference Upham1987: 109).

The Yata and Yōka High School incidents were particularly heavily contested incidents, leading to a range of political protests and major legal battles. The Yata and Yōka incidents took a protracted time to resolve legally, spanning years or even decades, primarily because they were not simply criminal cases but deeply entrenched political conflicts revolving around the legality of the BLL’s core strategy of denunciation (kyūdan) within a judicial system historically reluctant to address status-based discrimination. The Yata incident resulted in a District Court verdict in 1975, followed by a lengthy appeal, while the final appeal in relation to the Yōka incident (1974) was not finalized until the early 1990s (Upham Reference Upham1987: 96–103; Pharr Reference Pharr1990: 85, 165; Sumida Reference Sumida2024: 81). It should also be noted that some early legal rulings, such as that of the Osaka District Court which affirmed the importance of kyūdan as a “legitimate means to redress discrimination as long as they remain within legal limits,” added fuel and impetus to the maintenance of the practice (Upham Reference Upham1980: 58).

Another reason for the protracted nature of the struggle was the way these incidents became entangled in ongoing disputes within the Buraku liberation movement. The National Buraku Liberation Movement Association (Zenkairen), formed by JCP-supporting members of the BLL, emerged as a separate organization in 1976 and engaged in activism that was generally antagonistic toward the BLL (Reber Reference Reber1999: 311; Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 100–1). But despite the JCP and Zenkairen’s highly negative stance toward kyūdan (Fujino Reference Fujino2023: 47), not all BLL kyūdan of this period can be framed so negatively, simply written off as a form of profiteering as they came to be so often represented by these groups. The Buraku chimei sōkan (Buraku Lists) incident of 1975, just to give one example, served as an important reminder to activists that Buraku discrimination was alive and well in a country that had only recently enacted special measures legislation to combat some of its effects (see, for example, the way this issue is handled in Murakoshi Reference Murakoshi1986: 12, 37–8; also, Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 117–20).

Divergent views within the Buraku liberation movement

During the 1960s, Yamamoto Masao and the All-Japan Dōwa Association (Zennihon dōwakai), which he helped to establish in May 1960 as a counterforce to the BLL, viewed their activism as essentially irrational, rooted in erroneous left-wing ideology (Neary Reference Neary2022: 65; Kanai Reference Kanai2024: 94). Yamamoto, serving as Secretary General, argued that the BLL’s confrontational approach was based on a flawed class-struggle framework that failed to recognize that modern “monopoly capital does not need discrimination” (Yamamoto Reference Yamamoto2008 [1962]: 371, 373). He and the All-Japan Dōwa Association advocated for a state-led, “scientific” administrative approach, viewing the national government and the Dōwa Measures Deliberation Council rather than confrontational struggle as the proper vehicles for achieving liberation and integrating Buraku communities into the citizenry (Kanai Reference Kanai2024: 89, 94).

Accounts of Buraku liberation from regions with growing JCP influence in the late 1950s and 1960s, such as Yamaguchi and Kōchi, reveal steady party and member support for kyūdan in various forms, including administrative struggle in local confrontations with government and business. In his memoir, Murasaki Yoshimasa outlines the considerable guidance, support, and affirmation he received from the JCP in his denunciation campaigns against local governments and industries for discrimination in Yamaguchi during the early 1960s (see, for example, Murasaki Reference Murasaki1992a: 196–200; Murasaki Reference Murasaki1992b: 89–115). Evidence from Kōchi during the same period indicates that the JCP provided organizational structure and theoretical guidance for a variety of struggles including discrimination cases and denunciation campaigns, and people would gather for these actions at a time when the movement’s infrastructure was largely composed of JCP-aligned “progressive” individuals (Morita Reference Morita2012: 49–53). The reversal of the JCP position on kyūdan, as discussed above, is attributable to numerous factors, but relates particularly closely to tensions that arose within the Buraku liberation movement due to factional struggles and Asada’s assumed leadership of the BLL. JCP-aligned critiques of kyūdan began to emerge during the late 1960s and particularly early 1970s centering on the argument that the tactic was ideologically regressive and tactically counterproductive (Reber Reference Reber1999: 311; Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 172). The arbitrary use of violence in kyūdan was also heavily problematized (Sumida Reference Sumida2024; Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 87). Promoting a “national integration thesis” (kokumin yugōron), the JCP and its affiliated “normalization” wing viewed Buraku discrimination as a “feudal remnant” to be resolved through general class struggle. JCP and Zenkairen critics condemned BLL tactics such as kyūdan as “ineffective scare tactics that did little to reduce Buraku discrimination” (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 172). Furthermore, the JCP attacked the BLL’s use of kyūdan to enforce a “Single Window” (madoguchi ippon) monopoly over government funding, characterizing it as an unconstitutional and exclusionist delegation of public authority to a private organization (Neary Reference Neary2022: 92, 168).

From the perspective of those who remained inside or committed to the BLL, kyūdan continued to serve their primary function as a “basic form of struggle for the elimination of Buraku discrimination” (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 91). Leading intellectuals within the BLL, such as Oga Masayuki, actively defended the practice in the 1970s, continuing to view it positively as a tactic to address incidents of discrimination as well as general administrative government negligence in relation to the positive eradication of Buraku discrimination. Oga characterized kyūdan as a direct form of opposition as well as a moral necessity, asserting the right for Burakumin to resist oppression (Pharr Reference Pharr1990: 126). Yagi Kōsuke, cited elsewhere in this article, argued during the same period that any incidental violence or intimidation associated with denunciation sessions should qualify as “legitimate self-defense” against an “imminent, unjust infringement” of human rights (Upham Reference Upham1987: 107).

Defending and refashioning Kyūdan

The Japanese state played an even greater role in defining the legality and appropriateness of kyūdan during the 1980s and early 1990s, although fundamental ambiguities remained in relation to how the state viewed the practice throughout this period. While the judiciary conditionally justified the tactic, key bureaucratic organs actively sought out ways to obstruct it. The state struggled to reconcile the BLL’s coercive extra-legal tactics with Japan’s official democratic ideology, even as it resisted repeated demands to enact effective anti-discrimination legislation. The ongoing legal contestation of the Yōka incident, moreover, provided support for BLL insistence on the rightness and necessity of the practice.

Tomonaga Kenzō, a member of the Buraku Liberation Research Institute from the late 1960s, and subsequently a key theorist within the Buraku rights movement, addressed the issue of the theory and practice of kyūdan in an important 1986 BLL publication piece (Tomonaga Reference Tomonaga1986). Part of the context for this publication was the partially successful court case which ruled against the surviving defendant in the Yata Incident several years earlier. Another aspect was the emergence of a new generation of activists under Uesugi Saichirō’s leadership who were reshaping the BLL through major platform revisions and new policy goals despite strong internal opposition (Neary Reference Neary and Amos2026: 163). Tomonaga, directly deflecting Zenkairen criticism of the practice, highlighted the historical rise of kyūdan as a public form of struggle in response to failures on the part of government administrations to properly protect the “civic rights” (shiminteki kenri) of Burakumin (Reference Tomonaga1986: 60). Not a static or “scary” relic of the past, Tomonaga asserted that kyūdan was an evolving, scientifically grounded educational tool necessary for addressing the material and ideological roots of discrimination (Tomonaga Reference Tomonaga1986: 66).

Zenkairen was not the only agitator for the abolition of kyūdan, however. The ethics and legalities of kyūdan came to be questioned by numerous bodies and individuals by the second half of the 1980s, including the Civil Liberties Bureau of the MOJ, which publicly criticized them (Reber Reference Reber1999: 333). According to at least one source, cessation of the practice apparently became a condition for renewal of the SML (Reber Reference Reber1999: 333). Claims about the overall “scariness” of Burakumin also began to bubble to the surface, a sentiment captured in Fujita Keiichi’s 1987 publication Dōwa wa kowai kō (The Idea that Dowa is Scary) (Fujita Reference Fujita1987). A focus on the need to create a law to prevent Buraku discrimination also became a strong focus of the BLL from this time, as too the idea that international pressure could be brought to bear on Japan for human rights abuses (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 181–2; Neary Reference Neary and Amos2026).

At a regional level, various kinds of kyūdan practices often remained ostensibly unchanged in actual practice, shaped as they were by local histories of conflict and interaction that had produced distinctive power dynamics. To cite just one example, in an unpublished study on a community in rural Kyoto prefecture based on fieldwork conducted during the late 1980s, the author outlined the access they were given (and denied) in relation to preparatory sessions held in advance of a kyūdan related to an individual incident of discrimination. They also recorded access they were given to a kyūdan campaign against a Kyoto-based university. In the author’s ethnographical description of the latter campaign, it is clear that features of kyūdan from the late 1960s and early 1970s are on display, in addition to the mobilization of rhetoric about the practice as a critical tool of “education.” But from the same author’s discussion of her eventual choice of potential fieldwork sites, it also becomes apparent that different degrees of ideological openness likely existed between local communities committed to the BLL at this time (Otake Reference Otake1997: 29–34, 181–96).

In the face of growing vocality about the legitimacy of kyūdan in public life, then BLL Secretary General Komori Tatsukuni became particularly instrumental in pushing back on attempts to crack down on kyūdan, including in avenues such as Asamade nama terebi (the popular monthly midnight talk show on TV Asahi) in 1987. In a late 1980s BLL publication, Komori also defended kyūdan, defining it as “the pursuit of discriminatory words and actions illuminated by the standards of social justice” (Buraku kaihō dōmei chūō honbu 1988).

The MOJ released a statement based on an opinion issued by the Council on the Area Improvement Measures in December 1987, which stated that targets of denunciation were not required to consent to attending sessions (Monbushō jinken yōgokyoku 1989). This bureaucratic position was designed to dismantle the coercive aspect fundamental to the BLL’s use of kyūdan. The BLL strongly criticized this interference by MOJ as a clear abuse of state power. The BLL leadership insisted that the authorities should not obstruct kyūdan but should instead enact laws to eliminate discrimination and create effective remedial mechanisms. From the BLL’s perspective, the MOJ’s Human Rights Protection Division had agents available to deal with grievances; however, the Civil Liberties Bureau and its agents had no legal power whatsoever (only mediating capacity) and were unable to deal with discrimination beyond a “haphazard, incomplete manner” (Upham Reference Upham1980: 71). This practical lack of legal mechanism from their perspective undermined the state’s ability to offer a palatable alternative to kyūdan.

Yet while the practice of kyūdan was still retained as a core liberation practice by the BLL thereafter, one can see in subsequent statements a retreat to a more discursive realm. Kyūdan indeed came to be heavily governed by detailed sets of rules, the BLL needing as it did to respond to government concerns, especially after the MOJ’s famous direction concerning kyūdan issued in 1989 discussed above. The 1991 BLL official explanation of kyūdan offered a level of detail that up to that point did not really exist, suggesting perhaps that spontaneous protest had been sacrificed for legal considerations (Buraku Kaihō Dōmei Chūō Honbu Reference Kaihō1991). There was pushback, moreover, from elsewhere; anxieties about the indiscriminate policing of language, or kotobagari, as a pretext for kyūdan, began to arise from different quarters, including in some sections of the media, and among some literati (Shūkan bunshun henshūbu 1994).

From the middle of the 1990s, the practice of kyūdan entered a transitional phase where it remained an active, important political weapon, but its long-term viability was heavily debated, and its primary function was increasingly being replaced by legislative and international human rights advocacy efforts led by the BLL and its affiliated organizations (Hankins 2014, 188–9). In an important sense, there was a hollowing out of the political and social mechanisms historically associated with kyūdan. Moreover, the most significant change affecting kyūdan during the mid-1990s was the BLL’s strategic commitment to national anti-discrimination legislation and the subsequent institutionalization of human rights education measures by the state.

Twenty-first century Kyūdan

The Law on Special Measures for Local Improvements (Chiiki Kaizen Taisaku Tokutei Jigyō) was extended in 1992 and 1997. However, the national budget for Dōwa measures officially ended in March 2002 (for more on this history, see Neary Reference Neary2022). This approaching expiration increased the urgency for the BLL to find a permanent legal mechanism to combat discrimination. Following the rebuff of a proposed Fundamental Law for Buraku Liberation in 1993, the BLL had pushed for a general Human Rights Basic Law (Jinken kihon hō) (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 209–10). The government responded by passing interim laws leading up to the end of the SML, signaling an institutional approach to education. The Law for the Promotion of Measures of Human Rights Protection was passed in 1996 and The Law on Advancing Human Rights Education and Promotion (Jinken kyōiku keihatsu suishin hō) was passed in 2000 (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2018: 209–10). These new laws aligned with a broader trend to frame the Buraku problem within an all-inclusive human rights context, moving away from Buraku-specific measures toward general human rights concerns.

The role and meaning of kyūdan within a broader liberation strategy clearly shifted since the cessation of the SML. Kyūdan in the twenty-first century came to be redefined by a transition in the BLL’s primary strategy, moving from reliance on specific national subsidy laws to intensive international human rights advocacy and persistent demands for comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation. The aging of the movement’s membership also likely played a role in this shift. Since 2016, moreover, the use of legal mechanisms to target discriminatory acts, using local legislation triggered in many cases by the passing of the Act on the Promotion of the Elimination of Buraku Discrimination, has become much more conspicuous (for more on the 2016 Act, see Amos Reference Amos2020; Bondy Reference Bondy2020; Neary Reference Neary2020). While kyūdan as a practice remained active, there is nonetheless truth to both the perspective that the practice has weakened, and the declaration that “there is a need to enrich the ideas, forms, and methods of denunciation” (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 131–2).

Kyūdan as a term and practice did not become obsolete, however. The kyūdan campaign in relation to the Sayama Trial has continued, as too various struggles against local governments and industries across Japan in relation to various discriminatory incidents (these are documented and explained in Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026). Kyūdan have also taken place in the capital, including in a session involving the perpetrator of the “Mass Discriminatory Postcard Affair” in 2008. Beginning in May 2003, a series of over 400 incidents targeted Buraku community members and related individuals in Tokyo, involving the sending of discriminatory postcards, letters, and objects to their homes. Dozens of people were affected, including the BLL activist and researcher Uramoto Yoshifumi, who was one of the main targets of discrimination. In October 2004, a 34-year-old man was arrested, and the case was formally recognized as a human rights violation. He was indicted shortly afterward, admitting in court that his actions were motivated by discriminatory intent, and in July 2005 he was sentenced by the Tokyo District Court to two years in prison (for a description of this Affair, focusing particularly on its impact on Uramoto, see Amos Reference Amos2011; Uramoto Reference Uramoto2003: 234–7; Uramoto Reference Uramoto2011).

From Uramoto’s own explanation, the rationale for the setting up of the kyūdan was for the defendant to explain the truth behind the incident and to apologize to the victims. Uramoto also wrote of the desire to find convincing answers for what had happened (Uramoto Reference Uramoto2011: 200). Uramoto’s kyūdan document is interesting to analyze even at a basic linguistic level. It is, for example, a statement virtually devoid of honorifics, marked by what one might term “linguistic impoliteness,” arguably a characteristic of many kyūdan campaigns in prior decades. The desu/masu forms are non-existent when addressing the perpetrator and numerous questions are thrust upon the listener using the informal kai and dai forms. The social space necessary in regular discourse between Uramoto and his perpetrator is radically dissolved through such a language strategy, breaking existing linguistic conventions in the search for real answers. It is, moreover, never clear if the perpetrator should answer the frequent questions posed by Uramoto. Uramoto’s kyūdan basically finished soon after the perpetrator’s composure starts to break, suggesting that visible contrition was one desirable outcome for the session, and that perhaps this was impoliteness that had a performative dimension to it (Uramoto Reference Uramoto2011: 211–20).

At one level, such a kyūdan seems to have a closer affinity to the practice of demanding apologies, which can perhaps be seen as an attempt at rehabilitating a social relationship rendered impossible by a harmful act perpetrated by one person toward another (Wagatsuma and Rosett Reference Wagatsuma and Rosett1986: 472). To the extent that this is true, it signals a weakening of older postwar kyūdan practices, which arguably used such settings to include multiple demands within the same setting. The more singular emphasis in the Uramoto case is perhaps partly linked to the status of the perpetrator, who was unemployed at the time the events took place, complicating any attempt to elevate concerns about the systemic administrative failures that underpinned the incident. Yet it is also linked to the clear lack of proper legal protections for Uramoto, as the charge brought against the perpetrator, and the one he was eventually convicted for, was “intimidation” rather than “discrimination” (Amos Reference Amos2011: 193). As Uramoto (Reference Uramoto2011) himself makes clear in his writing about the incident, firsthand experience of the ineffectiveness of civil liberty structures organized by the MOJ was perhaps the most conspicuous feature of the incident.

Prior to the passing of the Act on the Promotion of the Elimination of Buraku Discrimination, it is clear that the terminologies used to refer to kyūdan-like campaigns had undergone change in many regions. In 2009, for example, the BLL Kochi City Liaison Council held a “confirmation study session” (kakunin gakushūkai) at Kodakasa City Hall in relation to an incident of discrimination allegedly committed by an employee of the City Fire Department. A reported 165 people, including the mayor, were in attendance, and the Vice-Chair of the BLL City Liaison Council declared the session a “denunciation meeting” despite its different linguistic framing by the administration (Kōchi Minpō Online, “Kyūdan-kai”). The BLL also arranged an “Opinion Exchange Meeting” with the Fukuoka Prefectural Real Estate Association in 2012 over “Land Discrimination Issues” that received widespread press coverage (Buraku kaihō dōmei 2012). The process of aligning kyūdan to fit in with existing legal frameworks led at least partially to a sanitizing of the language used to describe them.

Nonetheless, kyūdan as a formal act of denouncing Buraku discrimination still remained in practice even after the passing of the 2016 law. Kyūdan protest notes, for example, were sent to Miyabe Tatsuhiko in 2016 by local BLL branch members in relation to his decision to republish Buraku lists from the 1930s. This incident involved Tottori Loop (a pseudonym for Miyabe) and Jigensha (his publishing company) seeking to publish a reprint of a 1936 survey identifying Buraku communities with updated place names. This prompted the BLL and 249 individuals to sue for injunctions and damages, especially after the defendants also posted personal data of BLL affiliates online without consent. While the Tokyo District Court found violations of privacy and honor and ordered compensation, it was the Tokyo High Court that issued a landmark ruling recognizing a constitutional “right not to be discriminated against,” affirming a legally protected interest in living with dignity and free from unjust discrimination and influencing future anti-discrimination efforts in Japan (Okada Reference Okada and Kobayakawa2026: 120–1; Akuzawa Reference Akuzawa and Amos2026). There are also ongoing legal cases related to this incident and the subsequent rulings, as well as ongoing protests.

The notes entitled kyūdan addressed to Miyabe were made public by him, and they express high levels of anger, making comparisons between Miyabe’s stance and Hitler’s Final Solution, threatening legal action. At a fundamental linguistic level, honorific suffixes and language are treated as optional when addressing him in these documents, and socially confronting labels such as “evil fascist” (gokuaku no fashisuto) were also used to refer to him (Miyabe Reference Miyabe2016).

What is further interesting about the Miyabe Tatsuhiko case is that both kyūdan and legal proceedings underpinned the multilayered activism, with the latter being far more pronounced, but the former also deemed essential by certain affected individuals and communities.

The shift toward legal action and international human rights advocacy has trumped kyūdan in recent Buraku liberation politics not simply because kyūdan became weak in the face of a state growing in power, but because the movement adopted a sophisticated transformation of strategy that recast law as a more legitimate, sustainable, and internationally effective means of achieving their goals, especially after the expiration of foundational state funding. While kyūdan have in some respects shifted to become the rough equivalent of a victim impact statement, submitted or enacted outside the courtroom directly to the perpetrators of discriminatory actions, they are also important supplementary instruments to highlight discrimination. Partial albeit substantial victories in court cases now appear as the modus operandi for Buraku political struggle, but the persistence of kyūdan in various forms also functions as an acknowledgment of the relative uncertainty that remains in the judicial system for securing positive outcomes in relation to acts of discrimination.