Outcasts and marginals in medieval Japanto others whom they met. Ōyama Kyōhei locates the origins of serious concern with death pol-
lution among the aristocracy in the capital. While ordinary people had once buried their dead
near their homes—or even possibly within shrine precincts—nobles insisted that burials be
located as far away as possible from the sovereign’s residence—not to mention their own! Ōyama
argues that the fear of death pollution was originally an urban, elite phenomenon that eventually
spread to commoners and the provinces.^11
Specialized occupations emerged to deal with the pollution of animal and human corpses. The
earliest known evidence for such a specialty comes from Sakeiki’s entry of 1016/1/2, which
records that when an ox died in the stables of the Minister of the Left, “people of the riverbank
(kawarabito)” were summoned to dispose of the corpse.^12 From at least the twelfth century, more-
over, low- status people regularly swept the grounds of the sovereign’s palace, temples and
shrines, and the streets of the capital, ridding them of polluting objects such as dead animals as
well as of ordinary dirt.^13 It was widely thought that in so doing, they took pollution upon them-
selves. Fear of plague, personified as the plague kami, also contributed to people’s reluctance to
touch human corpses. Both human burials and ceremonies to pacify the plague kami were turned
over to specialists; Aomori Tōru cites a 1335 document that indicates that inujinin at Iwashimizu
Hachiman shrine had the job of burning paper offerings to placate this kami, and concludes that
the ceremony was well established by that time.^14
As Wakita Haruko points out, however, other factors were also involved: poverty, disease,
itinerancy, or begging could also lead to exclusion from society.^15 And once outcasts began to
settle in permanent villages at the end of the thirteenth century, the very difference between
ordinary agricultural villages and outcast settlements may have contributed to the perception
that inhabitants of the latter were “base” people.^16 Thus both people and places became the reposi-
tories for pollution.
Most scholars today agree that discrimination stemmed from conditions in the late Heian and
medieval periods, not from low status inherited from earlier times. The timing and severity of
discrimination, however, remains a subject of debate.
Outcasts or people of skill?
The work performed by outcasts might not have seemed terribly desirable but it was absolutely
necessary to the functioning of society. One might argue that this work was foisted onto people
who had no choice but to take it, because they had already been exiled from their communities.
Or, one might argue that tasks such as disposing of animal corpses, which included flaying them
and using their hides to make leather products, were really skilled occupations that were per-
ceived with some respect. Beginning with Kuroda Toshio and Amino Yoshihiko, a number of
scholars have disputed such issues. The debate focuses on the early medieval period, since most
scholars agree that from the late thirteenth century, discrimination against such occupational
groups intensified and was applied to additional groups as well.
In the early 1970s, Kuroda Toshio proposed that “base” people such as hinin were outside
the status order on which medieval society was built. In an often- quoted phrase, they occupied
“a status outside of status (mibungai no mibun)”^17 —outside the landholding system and the
socio- economic structure to which that system was central. Rather than pursuing occupations
related to agricultural production, hinin took jobs such as construction, cleaning, and dealing
with polluted matter,^18 including human and animal corpses as discussed above. According to
Kuroda, those who dealt with pollution were seen first as polluted. Such people were crimi-
nals, exiles, lepers, and beggars who had been ejected from society and thus had to take on
polluting work.^19