Discriminating readings: Burakumin and the literature of Shimazaki Toson and Nakagami Kenji

This dissertation examines literary representations of the outcast group in Japan known as the hisabetsu burakumin (discriminated-against people of the buraku, or hamlet) or simply as burakumin. I analyze how literary texts interpret burakumin discrimination, as well as how the discourses related to these texts generate their own readings of burakumin, discrimination, and liberation from discrimination. Specifically, I focus on two core sets of texts: Shimazaki Toson's 1906 novel Hakai (The Broken Commandment) and Nakagami Kenji's late 1970s fiction and essays. Toson's novel Hakai is regarded as a canonical work of modern Japanese literature, and, based on its subject of a burakumin teacher who is "passing" yet ultimately confesses his identity, is also an important work in terms of its explicit representations of burakumin. Postwar writer Nakagami Kenji's narratives, on the other hand, resist easy categorizations in terms of their representations of burakumin, and offer complex ways of reading the connections between place and identity that function as the roots of discrimination.; The first two chapters focus on Shimazaki Toson's Hakai. Chapter one analyzes acts of reading within the novel, and how they relate to the protagonist's process of self-identification as a burakumin, leading to his final public confession. Chapter two examines the textual revisions of Hakai, along with Toson's remarks concerning these revisions, and the critical responses to the novel in terms of their relation to buraku liberation movements.; The following three chapters focus on the narratives of Nakagami Kenji. Chapter three examines three of Nakagami's works of fiction--- Misaki (The Cape), Roji (The Alleyway), and Mizu no onna (Woman of Water)---and their depictions of the relationship between place and identity. Chapter four focuses on Nakagami's ethnographic reportage, Kishu--Ki no Kuni, Ne no Kuni Monogatari (Kishu--A Land of Trees, a Land of Roots), which was based on his travels in the Kii Peninsula and shows Nakagami's exploration of discrimination ( sabetsu). Chapter five analyzes the critical discourses that Nakagami himself participated in, especially concerning issues of discrimination, as well as how Nakagami became the subject of such "conversations" after his death in 1992. This chapter also examines how translation has served to frame Nakagami as a "buraku" writer in a way that emphasizes marginality.