There are at least three Hamilton students in Japan for their summer research, but Lily Yu '07 (Livingston, N.J.) wins for immersion: the comparative literature major spent her junior year abroad in the country and then stayed to do her research. Funded by an Emerson grant, Yu spent her summer investigating the formation of identity in burakumin literature.
She explained, "the burakumin are the largest minority in Japan; their status is something similar to the Untouchables in India." They are the descendants of the class which worked as leather tanners or butchers in Medieval Japan, professions which rendered their practitioners unclean to most of the Japanese. This stigma was passed down, despite the fact that many modern burakumin practice different trades than their ancestors.
Although the prejudice is less severe than before, it is still present, and the modern burakumin are marginalized and stereotyped as criminals, prostitutes, and drug dealers. What interests Yu is that the burakumin are "racially and genetically pure Japanese." They are minorities by custom, not religion or ethnicity, but have been "discriminated against for the length of history." It is a culture that preaches homogeneity, Yu explained, but has simultaneously created an "other" in the class of the burakumin.
Literature dealing with burakumin is rare: Shimazaki Toson's 1906 "The Broken Commandment" was one of the first novels to deal with their situation. Later novels focus more on "portraying the burakumin simply are human beings and not as a separate and lesser class of people" and Yu sees a distinct shift in the portrayal of the burakumin in 20th century literature. The central question of her reading is the following: "do some [burakumin] have their identities pressed upon them by society and merely assume them, or do others resist this identity and attempt to create new ones for themselves?"
Yu's interest in the burakumin stems from a class she took with Masaaki Kamiya, assistant professor of Japanese, during her sophomore year. It was on the advice of her project advisor, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Melek Ortabasi, that Yu applied for the research grant. "I just find it really interesting," she said of her topic. "I guess it strikes me as peculiar that such a large minority can exist in a country that denies its existence and instead attempts to perpetuate a myth of homogeny."
She used Toson's novel for her research, as well as more recent novels "The Cape" by Kenji Nakagami (1979) and "River with No Bridge" by Sue Sumii (1989). She also used academic literature on the burakumin such as "Japan's Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality" by George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma (1966) and "Japan's Minorities" (1997), edited by Michael Weiner.
During her junior year abroad Yu studied at Sophia University in Tokyo. Because certain books she needed were available only in Tokyo, she remained in Japan after the end of the school year. "I'm hoping that my research for the grant will actually be a foundation for more research in the future, whether it be for a thesis or eventual graduate work," she said. Yu plans to attend graduate school after she concludes her degree at Hamilton.
Her research is funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant Program, which allows students to work closely with a faculty member researching in depth an area of the student's interest.
- Lisbeth Redfield
