EAST ASIAN human Geography.

Hakkas in China and Burakumin in Japan

Miquel Àngel Castillo

WARNING: This paper was written sequentially.

Here you can see the entries in my weblog along this forthnight:

A singular quest: hakkas and burakumin

.

SYNOPSIS

day one.

We read in bafflement the proposal from our consultor.

Write a review of two EastAsian ethnic groups: the Chinese hakka and the

Japanese burakumin.

Find two articles in the ASIAN database.

Days 2-5. Painstaking work. Cut and paste skills on both articles.

day seven. Butting into the subject matter.

day eight. The negative effects on real individuals. Zero Tolerance policies.

day nine. The peculiar question of words.

day ten. historical background on Japan. Society insights.

Day eleven. Bouncing back to China. Migration causes a poverty curse.

day twelve. Folk-lore does not rhyme with wisdom.

day fourteeen. Hakka identitykit.

day fifteen. Prospectives (dark and bright).

day one.

We read in bafflement the proposal from our consultor.

We read in bafflement the proposal from our consultor.

Write a review of two EastAsian ethnic groups: the Chinese hakka and

the Japanese burakumin.

Find two articles in the ASIAN database.

Length: 13 pages [standard size and letter fontsize (Arial 12)]

There are two minorities groups in our report. A first glimpse into the matter show

they both belong to discriminated peoples in a way or other in China or Japan.

They have not any common point in ethnic lineage but we will try to delve into the

similarities and differences.

Luckily the text provided on the webpage about the hakka was quite large, so we

started to develop a rough idea.

Some questions began to pop in my thoughts: can we find a definition for these

groups? Is the Hakka group based on language, as it seems, or family origin (from

the male line, obviously)? As I keep rereading some parts, mixing with local

population was possible. To me, Han is a mixture of numerous tribes or ethnic

groups that resided in East Asia. Intermingling along 2000 years is impossible to

halt.

day two. A fresh start.

Learning about the burakumin took longer because I copied “burakimin” in the

google search and no results were given. Later, with the key word “untouchables”

things turn out much better.

There is no reference to the Japanese Burakumin but our first introduction into the

Hakka population had to be through reading in the encyclopaedias. We found

some comments in the Encarta, and Britannica (see below).

Much work had to be done and time was running short.

Days 3-5. Painstaking work. Cut and paste skills.

I dedicated my work at following my inspiration at various websites. Much of the

hakka references come through language input! Our google search day 5 goes

through Taiwan. Webpages are more likely in English and not government

controlled. We are lucky as results start to crop in.

Books quoted:

The History and Geography of Human Genes by L.L Cavalli-Sforza, P. Menozzi

and A. Piazza (Princeton University Press, 1994)

"The Languages of China" by S. Robert Ramsey (Princeton University Press,

1987)

Guest People: Hakka Identity in China & Abroad by Constable, Nicole

(Washington University Press Seattle 1995)

hakka sources

www.unescocat.org/cultmon/en/dossiers/hakka5.html

www.asiawind.com/pub/forum/fhakka/.html

www.chinalanguage.com/Language/Hakka/Survival/Grammar/intro.html

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/3847/sapienti/hakorig.htm

http://www.asiawind.com/pub/forum/fhakka/mhonarc/msg00255.html

http://home.i1.net/~alchu/hakka/toihak2.htm

buraku sources:

http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic22/sawako/9_2002.html

http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/burak.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/printout/0,9788,104138,00.html

This vast pool of information needed to be digested in the days to come.

day seven. Butting into the subject matter.

A. Shadows and distortions.

Buraku may look like other Japanese, speak the same language, eat the same

foods and wear the same clothes, but prejudice is always close. Why is it like that

still at current days? In a formally modern society, albeit a conservative one as the

Japanese, democracy should have meant changing social paradigms.

The hierarchy in the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) established the class system

where the eta were bound by many legal restrictions, which were enforced with

increasing frequency from the middle to the end of the period. They were

forbidden the privilege of sitting, eating, and smoking with commoners and of

crossing the threshold of a commoner home. Tomihiko Harada (1981) emphasizes

that this discrimination "was neither racial nor ethnic" and it did not "originate from

religious or occupational discrimination either".

My surprise spurred when I read the following “Many Hakka know - although few

non-Hakka do - that numerous prominent Chinese are Hakka, including China's

paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, Taiwan's president Li Teng-hui, and former

Singapore prime minister Li Kuan-yew.”

At the end of the 1980’s a Hakka ethnic feeling began to show which arose in

Taiwan and is now spreading to mainland China. Hakka dialect (language) is the

thread that holds people together.

Unlike the many ethnic groups classified by the Chinese government as 'minority

nationalities', the Hakka are officially included as part of the Han Chinese majority.

The Han label obscures Hakka identity in some ways. The characteristics of

Hakka people is they all claim to be Chinese and there is no provincial difference

to divide them. In their diaspora, they have set up roots in their new country of

choice, some into their third or fourth generations. Those pioneers are called “Lao

Fa Kiao” (Old Chinese Abroad). And their decendents see themselves as Chinese,

because they have strong ties to their roots and bound by a common language.

B. A true believers accounting job.

A daunting task to have a clear-cut question in any census. The burakumin is

estimated to number about 3% of the Japanese population or roughly 2-3 million

people.

The hakka souces say about 35 million: 25 in mainland, 4 in Taiwan and 6 in the

diaspora.

Other sources offer higher quantities: About 7% of the 1.2 billion Chinese clearly

state their Hakka origin or heritage and roughly 50 million to 75 million Hakkas all

over the world.

However, the actual number may be more as many Hakka Han who settled along

the path of migration assimilate with the local people. The Hakka identity is

gradually lost.

C. Current geographic distribution.

While the Japanese group was confined to The main Island, Hakkas distributed all

over the world.

The burakumin are concentrated in a few areas of Japan, namely in parts of

Kyushu, the coasts of the Inland Sea, Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto.

The hakka gradually migrated and mixed. In China, Hakkas can be found in the

provinces Kwangtung, Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangsi, Hunan, Szechwan, Sikiang,

Kweichow, and Hong Kong. Outside, Hakkas can be found in Malaysia,

Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, Indo-China, Taiwan, Brazil, Trinidad,

Surinam, Canada, USA, Holland, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and East-

Africa.

day eight. The negative effects on real individuals. Zero Tolerance policies.

A. The contemporary context

Prejudice towards Burakumin is always close. And the absence of any information

-- and fear of discussion -- about this invisible group serves to perpetuate the

prejudice, leaving people to spout untruths and rumors: that burakumin are

physically deformed, for example. Non-burakumin Japanese see the burakumin as

inherently morally defective.

About the burakumin, Japanese society tries not to trace their marks. A rare

specimen can be found in Sumii Sue (1902-1997), a Japanese woman writer, who

devoted her entire life to terminating discrimination against burakumin. The most

prominent of her protest against discrimination against burakumin is her seven

volume novel, The River with No Bridge (Hashi no Nai Kawa, 1961-1992).

Discrimination against Buraku was not something that came about as a result of

emotions, tradition or the consciousness of people. Its origins cannot be traced to

any of these. The Buraku problem was nothing more nor less than a political

problem in the modern feudal era.

The burakumin were further oppressed by a mythology that developed out of their

political oppression. Much of this mythology centering around the supposed

uncleanness and inhumanness of buraku people. Some Burakumin have tried to

move out of their ghettos or isolated areas and "blend" into society in general, but

education, employment and marriage inquiries into a person's background always

present the threat that their Burakumin status will be revealed.

Such a situation, of course, is inherently self-fulfilling as the burakumin are unable

to get good education and good jobs and thus are effectively kept in their lower-

class status.

By the mid-nineteenth century Hakka had emerged as a distinct linguistic and

social group, and often clashed violently with Cantonese-speakers over land and

other resources. They had a different evolution in the next 50 years.

To compare, read this “The Hakka were called “guest people”when they began

migrating into Yue-speaking territory, and the exotic name seems to have stuck

quite simply because, until fairly recently, many Cantonese and Min mistakenly

thought that the Hakka were not Chinese at all, but rather some kind of strange

non-Han "barbarians" like the Tai or the Miao.” (quoting Robert Ramsey).

Not all the groups called Hakka accept changes in their way of life. Comunism

offered real chances of access to education and in the 80’s some research tried to

prove old certainties. Isolation and backwardness comes from rural backgrounds.

Urban settlements have proven a good way of levelling opportunities to Hakka in

all there dwellings.

B. A taste of history 111 years ago. Two personal stories.

A Hakka Chinese immigrate. Zheng Ping-Yuan and Ping-Sheng were born in a

little Hakka village in the district of Dong Guan, Guangdong Province, China; the

year was 1858AD. Their parents were poor peasants who had no land of their own

- instead they rented about an acre of land from the landlord in the village. By

planting rice and some cash crops in the field they managed to escape starvation.

The produce from the rented acre of land had to support a family of four, including

the rent to the landlord. Life was a constant struggle for them, but somehow they

magaed to scrape through year after year.

Ping-Sheng Ping-Yuan never had any formal education but they knew that life was

tough, and as farmers, they could not rid themselves of the fate of poverty. But the

time they were in their teens, the brothers had already begun helping their parents

tilling the land; they disliked farming, but they were too young to anything else.

A memory from novelist Sumii sue. She learned from buraku district children

what was the hardest thing as a person who was being discriminated against had

to face. She saw a movie called "Tsuzurikata Kyodai" (Brothers and a Sister Who

Are Good at Writing Compositions) with some students who were from both

buraku and non-buraku districts in Wakayama Prefecture. The film was about a

poor family who moved back to Japan from Taiwan. She noticed that the students

from buraku districts cried before the non-buraku students when they saw the

scene of the younger brother Fusao dying. Wondering about the difference in

timing, Sumii asked the buraku students why they cried even when Fusao was still

alive. A second-year junior high school student responded: “People die once,

therefore I'm not afraid of dying nor am I sad about it. What is sad is to realize

under what circumstances a person dies. The younger brother does not die

because of an illness. He would have been saved if he could have seen doctor. He

could have been cured if he had been hospitalized”. Therefore the boy was being

killed by poverty, not illness.

day nine. The peculiar question of words.

A. In the name of the rose.

Nowadays “Burakumin” refers to “village people”, nothing very specific then. The

Meiji era proclamed they were “common citizens”.

"Hakka" in Hansii characters means "Guest People" literally. The name 'Hakka' is

a word of Cantonese origin literally means 'guest' or 'stranger'. The spelling

"Hakka" is derived from the pronunciation in Hakka dialect ( pronounced as

"haagga" in Hakka and "kejia" in Mandarin). The term 'Hakka' or 'Hak Ga'

comprises of two words, meaning, Hak='guest' and Ga='family'.

The Hakka language is also referred to as Hak-fa, Hak-ka-wa, K'ak-wa, or Makkai-

wa.

How and why the name Hakka was adopted ? He believes that the population

pressure in original Hakka areas is the key. When Hakka tried to expand to other

areas because population grew and conflict between Hakka and non-Hakka

developed after they settled in non-Hakka areas. Hakka was used by other ethnic

groups because they were essentially the “ guest “ people to the non-Hakka

areas. In order to unify among themselves, the identity using the most common

used name of " guest " (i.e. Hakka) developed. The name of Hakka started to

appear in literature only after XVIIth century, at the same time of conflict between

Hakka and non-Hakka began.

In absence of a proper name to refer to themselves, groups tend to get together in

their langauage: “Deutsch” means “the people” (where our Catalan translation

“alemanys” goes back to IV century “alemannes” “=all men”), “euskera” means

“those who speak our language”. Similarly, all those who are fortunate to still

master the Hakka tongue would find a lot of "Tziga Ngin" (our own people)

anywhere in China and abroad.

B. Euphemisms for hatred utterances.

In the 1920’s Cantonese were calling Hakka "barbarian" tribes. Cantonese even

used the Hon character with "khien" (ch'yuan in Mandarin, dog next to the "Hak"

character or called Hakka "ch'i", a Hon character with the "dog" sign in a clear

derogative way.

Other terms used in the past showed the specific non-friendly relationship with

these outcasts. The most common name found was “eta”, written with two

ideograms which mean “much impurity” or “full of filth”. Another names in the Edo

era were “hinin” meaning “non-human” or “kawaramono”. And the synthesis idea

was “untouchable class”. Besides, one term of contempt for the burakumin people

is kokonotsu, (nine), not ten, which makes them imperfect, something less than

human.

The mainstream media go to great lengths to avoid any discussion of the group,

and code words are more the norm. An article about someone thought to be a

burakumin, for example, might describe him as someone “who likes to attend the

dog races”.

day ten. historical background on Japan. Society insights.

Stories from old times show that burakumin existed, informally, as a social class

as far back as the 6th century, but they were shunted to the bottom of a five-tier

caste system during the Tokugawa period (also known as the Edo period, 1603-

1867) when the ruling shogunate established a strict hierarchical feudal society

under which the discrimination against the eta people was decreed. Livia Monnet,

in her Introduction to My Life: Living, Loving, and Fighting, writes: In the Tokugawa

period (1603-1867) the eta outcasts were placed outside the four-class social

system and lived in segregated slums and villages.

Severe prohibitions and harsh discriminatory regulations concerning the

professions, dwellings, travel, and other aspects of the lives of outcasts were

issued by the mid-eighteenth century. Official discrimination continued until the

beginning of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). In August 1871 a national government

edict brought it to an end. The edict proclaimed: "The titles of eta and hinin shall

be abolished; and henceforth they shall be treated in the same manner, both in

occupation and standing, as the commoners". Yet de facto discrimination

continued.

The struggle against discrimination and oppression was carried on after the war by

the Buraku Liberation League (Buraku Kaiho Domei). Special government and

locally founded programs for the improvement of sanitation, housing, education,

and professional training in designated buraku areas were implemented, and

national campaigns were launched for identifying and eliminating discriminatory

practices toward burakumin.

Day eleven. Bouncing back to China. Migration causes a poverty

curse.

A. Contrasting Western sources

Western reference work was an early start. Encarta says: “term applied to a

migratory people of southern China." The more I read they had been around for

many centuries. Many moved to less populated areas because of the pressure of

population growth. Most of them living in farming community. And the CD-rom

continued: “"They are thought to be descended from the Burmese or Thais or from

the aboriginal inhabitants of northern China. The Hakka have always been

persecuted by the natives of the regions in which they have settled."

The New Encyclopedia Britannica said that "group of North Chinese who migrated

to South China, especially Kwangtung and Fukien provinces, during the Southern

Sung dynasty (1127-1279), when North China was occupied by Inner Asian

tribesmen."

Some modern biological studies (see Cavallo Sforza’s book) indicated Hakka are

primarily southern Mongoloid groups not northern groups as all the genetic trees

and maps demonstrate that Southern Chinese is distant from Northern Chinese.

B. On the move

Tradition goes back at five migrations. But the record of the first two stages

probably are merely "legendary". It is also possible the people that really migrated

from northern and central China are really small in number.

Before the Five-Dynasty, there was almost no record in history about the activities

in Hakka areas. After Sung dynasty, more literature regarding current Hakka area

can be found. Professor Fong called "Era the Hakka Stepping into History".

Hakka systematically migrated for the 3rd time to further south, west and other

areas began in Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

The 4th migration (1700-1800) was not due to the war. This migration is more

recent and is much better documented. For example, at the beginning of Ching

dynasty, Hakka people started to move to Sichuan. This migration was secondary

to the pressure of population increase. The areas where Hakka inhabited were

primarily mountainous areas and very few farming land are available. Hakka

started to move to areas with less population. Sichon (Sichuan) was less

populated because of revolts at the end of Ming dynasty. Some moved to Hunan

and Kongsi provinces. Some started also to migrate to Taiwan.

For the record, the only state that the Hakka people ever possessed was the Lan

Fang Republic. Kwangtung Hakkas briefly established a Hakka state in Western

Kalimantan in 1777 and lasted until 1884. The first of ten presidents was Low Lan

Pak, a Meixian Hakka. In 1884 the Dutch attacked the republic and after 4 years of

battle the Hakkas were defeated and fled to Sumatra. From there they moved to

Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where they contributed significantly to the

establishment of the state of Singapore.

The 5th migration of Hakka from eastern Kuangtung to other parts of Kuangtung

and Kongsi provinces. Migration to Taiwan, other parts of Asia, Pacific islands,

central America and Africa became more and more common. Many Hakka

communities were established in those areas.

Researchers try to find answers to some questions raised: how history is used to

create a sense of Hakka Chinese identity within the Hakka diaspora? how Hakka

identity is linked with social class and economic factors; how strong Hakka

presence has influenced culture in Malaysia.

day twelve. Folk-lore does not rhyme with wisdom.

Colourful images and stereotypes of the Hakka abound in folklore, popular

literature, and tourist brochures, as well as in academic and missionary writings.

To rescue Hakka culture from simple folksiness or from becoming a mere tourist

attraction (as in the case of the tulous), what is needed is coordinated, ambitious

action which, especially in mainland China, is still a long way away.

How Hakka gender roles and communal egalitarian values have shaped Hakka

culture. Peculiar dwellings mainly due to group defence reasons; and women free

from menial jobs inside the house, agriculture painful work model some special

characteristics.

The eta formed a heterogeneous group Considered social outcasts that included

butchers, grave diggers, leather workers, tanners, waste-handlers, beggars,

prostitutes, and actors. They were easily recognizable, as they were not allowed to

dress their hair in the same way as commoners, had to use a rope instead of a

sash to bind their kimonos, and were sometimes obliged to wear a patch of leather

on their clothes as a badge of their defiled status –like the jews in Europe! They

were only permitted to marry other eta and could not live outside eta villages, not

enter the service of commoners as servants.

day thirteen. A day off-work

day fourteeen. Hakka identitykit.

A. On the Hakka language.

For no matter what the ethnic origin of the Hakka, the group is linguistically

Southern Chinese. The Hakka dialects are historically allied to the other Southern

dialects around them. The have some unmistakably Northern features, but they

are actually not much more like Mandarin than Cantonese is.

Hakka is one dialect of the Chinese language. It has approximately thirty-three

million speakers world wide. However, there are sub-dialects of Hakka. This is due

to the geographical distribution and local influences on its speakers. The Moi Yen

(Meixian) dialect is considered to be the standard dialect. Meixian is a city in the

north eastern region of Guandong Province in China. Other sub-dialects of Hakka

differ tonally and phonetically.

Professor Chen argues that “the only real unique part about Hakka is the

language. If the Hakka migrated to a new area and Hakka language transplanted

to the new areas successfully then all population there became Hakka. If the

Hakka language is not established in the new area, then immigrants disappeared

and adopted the new identity of the ethnic group of other language.

But keep in mind that the origin of dialect or language groups are mostly emotional

and political rather than logical and scientific. Urdu-Hindu and lately Serbo-

Croatian are good examples. The two "languages" are almost mutually intelligible,

but the speakers claim that they are different languages which can distinguish both

groups. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are also very similar in phonology,

vocabulary and grammar. On the other hand, the Hainan dialect, Chaozhou

dialect, Taiwan dialect and Southern Fujian dialects are grouped together as a

"Minnan" dialect, but when a Xiamener goes to Haikou in Hainan and speaks his

mother tongue, he is in a much worse position than a Cantonese going to Meixian.

Therefore, don't view the dialect difference as "scientific" as genetics, and it is far

more than an issue of "pure" linguistics.

B. Hakka identity bonds. Half truths and other white lies.

The Hakka identify themselves as Northern Chinese and no doubt this gives extra

bonus at group pride (old dynasties were all from north, Huang-ho river and

surrounding, weren’t they? Hakka scholars claimed Hakka were originally from

northern China whose ancestors migrated by stages to southern China because

their "homeland" was occupied by "barbarian" tribes. They claimed the Hakka was

the most authentic Han. But the interlocking migration pattern between Hakka and

non-Hakka repeated again and again on both directions as professor Chen states.

History shows that they were open to their new society. Christianity has been

incorporated into Hakka identity in Hong Kong; Hakka identity has experienced a

reawakening in Taiwan during the 1980s and early 1990s; and was of relevance in

the Chinese communist revolution and continues to be important in contemporary

China.

Hakkas tend to be perceived by other Chinese as standoffish, clannish, frugal,

determined, and almost dour people. One reason for the perceived Hakka

standoffishness is they probably were standoffish –as one Hakka wrote on the net.

Many Hakkas have a pride in their culture which arises from the fact that they

migrated from the North i.e. the 'cradle of Chinese civilisation' and therefore

perceive themselves to be culturally superior to the 'Southern yokels' they settled

amongst. The North-South divide in China is no different from the North-South

divide in Europe (also Italy!), India or the US.

To end with, we quote Nicole Constable words: “But despite the obvious

importance and distinctiveness of the Hakka, until now no detailed, comparative

analysis of the meaning of Hakka identity has been published.”

day fifteen. Prospectives (dark and bright).

Japan's government has passed laws to end discrimination against the group, and

has set up special programs to improve burakumin neighbourhoods, and improve

their children's education. The prejudice, though, persists. "Around me, day to day,

it doesn't seem anyone discriminates against me," says Hiroshi Kanto, a

burakumin in Kyoto. "But then one day my daughter came home from elementary

school and said some other kids' parents told them not to play with her because

she is burakumin."

The burakumin scare many people. The mainstream media go to great lengths to

avoid any discussion of the group, and code words are more the norm. The

burakumin scare many people. There is one place, however, where talk about the

burakumin is freewheeling and unfettered. That place is the Internet. Here, of

course, people don't worry about a backlash because they can be anonymous.

The question now is whether the Internet revolution will help, or hurt the group.

Channel 2 still holds an optimistic view. "One of the discussion threads was a

survey about discrimination people experienced, or from the other side, that they

imposed," he says. "You can't do that anywhere else but on an anonymous bulletin

board. It's the only place for these two opposing voices to communicate."

The first Asiawind Hakka Forum started on September 2, 1996, and was later

replaced by a new forum format on Jan 12, 2001. The forum has facilitated the

Toronto Hakka Conference 2000, which was the first international Hakka

conference held in N. America with participation of more than 300 friends.

Asiawind's forum links Hakkas from all over the world to reminisce their hometown

lives in China and away from China. I am glad that such a small corner of the

Internet has brought so much joy and meaning to all participated.

Since the mid 80’s progress in Taiwan has been slow but steady, with the

emergence of communications media and an incipient normalisation in the

teaching of the Hakka language in state schools, political representation, the birth

of cultural associations, etc. A reaction has also taken place on the mainland and

Hakka studies have reached some universities in Kwangtung province.

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