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Tens of thousands of buraku-min have tried to flee oppression by "passing." But the risk of discovery is high —partly because of the diligence of private detectives hired either by corporation personnel managers or by parents who suspect that their offspring's fiance may be of buraku-min origin. Many outcasts, while passing at work in the city, still prefer to live in the reassuringly familiar surroundings of their special hamlets; they must resort to ruses like getting off the bus a stop or two early so that fellow passengers who are not outcasts will not see them entering a buraku. Their psychological suffering can be intense. Said one youth: "Once a group of high school friends began discussing outcasts without realizing I was one. One boy held up four fingers, meaning the four legs of an animal; it's a symbol of dislike, fear and contempt. Imagine how I felt!"
A better way of escaping, at least emotionally, is by taking an active part in the civil rights movement. The crusade began in 1922 when a poor shoemaker named Zennosuke Asada formed the Suiheisha (Levelers' Society), forerunner of the Liberation League. In 1968 the movement won passage of a law banning public inspection of the social registers that contain the family history of every Japanese citizen. A year later the league successfully backed a civil rights law that commits public funds—$400 million this year—for buraku housing, high school scholarships and vocational training.
Salvation. Japan's booming economy has provided jobs for many buraku-min, but the group has made few social gains. Young Japanese are, in fact, less prejudiced than their elders, and there are more mixed marriages than formerly. But few religious or intellectual leaders are strongly behind integration—partly because they are ashamed to admit that segregation exists. Professor Murakoshi sees the salvation of the outcasts only in a wholly unrealistic goal—an end to the monarchy, which even in its postwar, watered-down form remains the country's most revered institution. As Murakoshi sees it, the Emperor symbolizes and enforces the status quo in the Japanese system, and is thus responsible for the plight of the buraku-min. "Just as Japan created a superhuman being," Murakoshi charges angrily, "so it created, by necessity, a class of subhumans—us."
* Remarkably similar to the average 15-point difference between U.S. blacks and whites, which most experts attribute to environmental influences.