The ANU Japan Institute Seminar Series showcases cutting-edge research by leading and emerging scholars based primarily in Australia and Japan.
Confrontation and Freedom: Denunciation Practices in Japan’s Buraku Liberation Movement
Denunciation (kyūdan) was a central strategy used by Burakumin in both the Suiheisha (1922–1942) and postwar Buraku liberation movements to confront discrimination in twentieth-century Japan. It involved publicly challenging alleged offenders to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize, and commit to preventing future discrimination. Beyond policing language, kyūdan enabled Buraku communities to define the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Celebrated for prompting political responses, most notably the 1969 'Special Measures Laws' that improved Buraku lives, it also provoked controversy for instances of excess and violence.
This talk reexamines the history of denunciation within the Buraku Liberation Movement, tracing its evolution, persistence, and the debates surrounding its legitimacy as a tool of social justice in the absence of effective anti-discrimination law.
Speaker
Dr Timothy D Amos is Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. His research explores the social and legal history of early modern and modern Japan, focusing on marginalised communities, status/caste, discrimination, and everyday life from Tokugawa times to the present. He is the author of Embodying Difference: The Making of Burakumin in Modern Japan (UHP, 2011) and Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order (Routledge, 2020), as well as the recently published co-edited volume Alternative Histories of Development in Japan and East Asia: Unthinking Modernization, Recreating Lifeworlds (Routledge, 2025).
Image - Buraku Liberation Exhibition at Liberty Oska (supplied by Dr Timothy D Amos)
Contact the ANU Japan Institute Seminar Series Convener: Dr Andrew Levidis at andrew.levidis@anu.edu.au