Fighting the Taboo Cycle: Google Map Protests and Buraku Human Rights Activism in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This article explores the historical significance of an incident reported in the international media in 2009 when Burakumin groups raised concerns about privacy and possible human rights abuses in relation to a new map service offered by Google. Reportage at the time indicated that historical maps containing references to outcaste settlements could be laid over contemporary maps to disclose the exact location of contemporary Buraku districts. A thorough examination of the incident, however, reveals a more complicated story. On the one hand the incident is clearly an example of ‘human rights activism’, an ongoing political strategy within the Buraku liberation movement to achieve permanent legal recognition of their status in the face of a state that has long resisted such demands. At the same time, however, the main features of this incident – silence, revelation, protest, and erasure – are also reoccurring themes within modern Buraku history that comprise what is described in the article as a taboo cycle. In their struggles for liberation, Burakumin have developed numerous strategies to combat the cycle as well as use it to their advantage.

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