19
Outcasts and marginals in
medieval Japan
Janet R. Goodwin
In late classical and medieval Japan—roughly the eleventh through sixteenth centuries—certain
groups of people were marked off from the rest of society in a negative way. The nature of that
differentiation has been the topic of much modern scholarly debate. Were such people com-
pletely ejected from the social structure or consigned to its margins, or did they simply occupy a
different social system from the agrarian structure that dominated Japanese society? How do we
characterize people who, on the one hand, were confined to certain occupations that others might
consider degrading, but on the other hand monopolized the right to perform those occupations
and through them might have prospered or obtained power? What factors were involved in cre-
ating outcast status, and how were these factors applied to individuals and groups? Is it possible
to find a common thread connecting lepers, butchers, entertainers, and garden designers, all of
whom at certain times were designated as outcasts?^1 And perhaps most importantly for histori-
ans, how did both the perceptions and the actual conditions of such persons and communities
change over time?
Perhaps one reason that this subject has aroused such vigorous debate is because it has modern
political implications not found in the history of other broad groups, such as aristocrats, warriors,
or cultivators. In the Edo period (1603–1867), certain people were segregated from the rest of
society and suffered severe legal discrimination. The descendants of such groups continue even
today to face social and economic stigma. Rightly or wrongly, these groups are often seen as the
heirs of medieval victims of discrimination; thus just as the historiography of slavery cannot be
separated from today’s civil rights movement in the United States, the historiography of outcast
and marginalized people needs to be considered in part from the viewpoint of liberation move-
ments in today’s Japan.
This is not to say that modern victims of such discrimination, or their Edo- period predeces-
sors, necessarily form a community with a continuous history rooted in classical or medieval
times. Some scholars posit continuity, while others do not. Nevertheless, the perception of a linear
and hereditary process, from classical/medieval to Edo to modern times, has not only influenced
modern scholars’ understanding of earlier practices, but has stimulated research on these prac-
tices. Modern associations opposing discrimination have been active in collecting and analyzing
relevant primary source materials and publishing articles based on them, some scholarly, some
directed at a broad audience. Thus while exploring the historiography of outcast and marginalized