Photos3

While I was in Osaka I was fortunate enough (thanks to the efforts of a member of BLHRRI who took an inordinate amount of time off to organise stuff for me and show me around) to visit 2 Buraku areas. This is one of them. As you can see from the photo on the left, the Buraku areas are now really quite nice looking places to live in. It is at huge contrast to the slums that they were 30 years ago. The changes are as a result of the dedicated efforts of the regional Buraku Liberation League, and the money that was allocated from the Special Measures Laws.
The photo looks towards the local BLL headquarters and the message above the figure reads "Let us protect the important human rights starting with ourselves" (that's a pretty lose translation - it's taisetsuna-jinken mamorou, jibun kara).
30 years ago people walked around this Buraku to avoid it, and there were few facilities available for the people living within it, but now...

People are actually coming into the Buraku from the surrounding areas to use its facilities. This is in the sports and children's complex where a table-tennis club is practicing. These people are not Burakumin, and this is one of the keys to removing Buraku discrimination - to get non-Burakumin to enter into the Buraku communities and get to know the people there so that the myths about Buraku people are dispelled.

The complex is also used as a gathering place for the Buraku children, where they can support each other and participate in the extra-curricular activities that are run for them by the local BLL. There are still gaps in academic achievement between Buraku children and non-Buraku children so after-school catch-up classes are also run for the Buraku children who are behind, and literacy classes are run for Buraku adults who did not attend school when they were children and never learned to write (this is still a big problem for the Burakumin).