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.
______________________________________________This line marks the end of report.