Photos4

This is a photo of one of the streets of S_ Buraku. As you can see, it looks like any other street in Japan, in fact, it looks nicer than most other streets in Japan. This fact has caused some reverse discrimination to occur in recent years. As the Buraku slums have been turned into clean and modern areas, it has often caused agrivation from people from surrounding districts as they sometimes felt that people who were socially below them were rising above them without making any effort. Government handouts (a concept that is not unfamiliar here in New Zealand with regard to the Maori people).
In order to rectify this situation, people need to be better educated about the reasons behind the improvement of the Buraku areas and the history of the Burakumin so that they can come to understand why these kinds of measures are being taken. When you see the photos of what these areas looked like 30 years ago, and you talk to the people who lived there, it is very humbling to realise what they have come out of and how hard they have had to fight to achieve what they have. They have foungt a thousand times harder for these improvements than anybody should have to, and probably deserve them more than anybody else would.

Here you can see an example one of the apartment blocks that have been built in the Buraku. They purposefully built them low with nice spaces inbetween them so that people could stand on the uppermost balcony and still talk to people who were standing on the ground. Much planning has gone into the construction of such buildings, and one can see that the money that came out of the Special Measures Laws (due to end in 2002) has been very well spent indeed.

Here is the local temple. Adjacent to it is a bath house that was recently finished. Not all Buraku have seen such improvements. The BLL is very strong in Osaka, so the regional government is quite progressive in helping the Buraku communities to develop, but in areas where the BLL is not so strong, or in Buraku communities that have not been recognised as Dowa areas (Buraku communities in need of aid) by the Government, there have been few improvements such that some Buraku are still facing conditions that S_ Buraku faced 30 years ago.

Lastly, here is a pool that has been built by the S_BLL above a car park at the edge of the Buraku. You can see the surrounding non-Buraku areas in the background. Facilities such as this one, as with the sports halls, help to bring in non-Buraku children to mix with the Buraku children so that they do not grow up with prejudice in their hearts.