Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that while Japan Communist Party and linked opposition to the New Law is rooted in historical interpretative conflicts surrounding the nature of Buraku discrimination, a study of organizational contestations of the law reveal significant shifts in liberation movement politics.

Paper long abstract:

On May 19 2016, Toshihiro Nakai, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politician and member of the Lower House, along with eight other politicians, submitted the Bill for the Promotion of the Elimination of Buraku Discrimination to the Committee for Judicial Affairs. The same day, Tadashi Shimizu, Japan Communist Party (JCP) politician and also member of the Lower House, condemned the Bill in an Akahata (Red Flag) article, calling it legislation that would "cement" (koteika) and "perpetuate" (eikyūka) Buraku discrimination. Shimizu repeated these criticisms when the Bill was presented to the Lower House for debate on June 1, resulting in its temporary shelving. On August 14 the Zenkoku chi'iki jinken undō sōrengō (National Confederation of Human Rights Movements in the Community) convened an emergency meeting in Kobe to discuss further strategies for combatting the Bill. The activism of this group, which was established after the dissolution of the Zenkoku Buraku Kaihō Undō Rengōkai (National Buraku Liberation Alliance) in 2004, highlights important continuities in the postwar internal political struggles within the Buraku liberation movement.

The processes and debates surrounding the drafting of the Bill for the Promotion of the Elimination of Buraku Discrimination also hint at important differences between past and present forms of legislative activism. In the postwar period, interpretative conflicts, particularly centering on understandings of the nature of discrimination and the desirability of state intervention, led to controversial splits within the liberation movement, particularly on the left. Buraku liberation organizations vying for political influence and legal reform were until recently usually clearly labelled and their political affiliations and institutional allegiances reasonably transparent. The 2016 Anti-Buraku discrimination bill, however, was introduced by an LDP politician and his bipartisan supporters, and an "alliance" with a Buraku liberation lineage but considerably different membership resists the bill for complex reasons. Such changes suggest the emergence of a new era of Buraku liberation politics marked by shifting motivations, allegiances and fault lines and shaped by disparate visions surrounding the desirability of state enforcement of human rights within an increasingly globally demarcated order of distributive justice.