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This introductory chapter offers a brief background into the works of Nakagami Kenji (1946–1992) and how he represented the voices of the socially silenced in Japan. Notably, Nakagami belonged to the Burakumin (“outcaste”). Although he is known as a Burakumin writer, and much of his writing is indeed set in a Burakumin context, not all of his material provides representations of Burakumin life. His work further depicts the diversity of backgrounds among Buraku people, including those who, like the writer himself, received financial and economic benefits from the democratic systems introduced at the time. Given this Burakumin emphasis, the chapter briefly introduces key historical and sociopolitical aspects of that experience before embarking on an analysis of the writer's works. This analysis also includes a brief overview of the extensive corpus of Nakagami scholarship which exists in both Japanese and English.

This concluding chapter revisits the previous chapters, drawing out major insights and highlighting further discussions on Nakagami's works that have not been covered by previous scholarship. It returns to the Burakumin, who remain marginalized in Japanese society—their members easily rendered voiceless. The chapter argues that Nakagami's literature is an attempt to address this issue and give voice to a range of individuals within this and other marginalized groups. In addition, the chapter considers Nakagami's later works, produced from the mid-1980s onward, in which a key theme of his narratives is the representation of the diaspora-like drift of the Burakumin, whose homeland has been lost. It concludes by once more drawing attention to the ways in which Spivak has helped to illuminate previously unrecognized aspects of Nakagami's work.

This chapter sets out to clarify the paradox of representing the silenced subaltern voice. It appropriates an aspect of Gayatri Spivak's scholarship that creates possibilities for a new reading of Nakagami. Before arguing Spivak's view, the chapter presents background information about Kishū Kumano (Japan's marginalized South) by referring to Nakagami's essays, interviews, and travel journals. It examines Spivak's critique of ideology, hegemony, the subaltern, and her discussion on the role of the intellectual. Based on these ideas of the “intellectual,” the chapter investigates Nakagami's ambivalence about his role as a member of the silenced Burakumin community who is nevertheless privileged as a “person who has (written) language.” The challenges inherent in the act of representation are investigated by reading Marx's interpretation of this issue, in addition to the ideas of more contemporary theorists such as Spivak and Karatani. The chapter concludes with an analysis of an example of Nakagami's representation of the voices of mukoku Kumano Burakumin from the 1978 travel journal Kishū.

This chapter gives a close rereading of Nakagami's most well-known work, the Akiyuki trilogy: “Misaki,” Kareki nada, and Chi no hate shijō no toki. It particularly focuses on Nakagami's depiction of the voice of a transgressive man who is oppressed by the fragmentation of the relationship between him and his family and also his subaltern (Burakumin) community during the dismantlement of the Kumano Burakumin homeland. Particular attention is paid to how Nakagami's theory of monogatari (narrative) operates to depict the voice of the Kasuga Burakumin. Of particular importance is the third novel in the trilogy, Chi no hate shijō no toki. Although this chapter provides an overview of “Misaki,” and Kareki nada, the focus of the textual analysis is on how Nakagami, a writer who consciously chose to “become a Burakumin,” represents the Burakumin voice in Chi no hate shijō no toki. It also discusses the Akiyuki trilogy as an example of Nakagami's unique writing practice that derived from overlaying the modern Japanese Western-influenced naturalist literature mode with the more traditional Japanese narrative mode.

This chapter discusses Nakagami's representation of old women or oba from Kumano. To articulate the significance of the oba in Nakagami's narratives, it first investigates Nakagami's reading of the work of well-known woman author Enchi Fumiko to provide insights into his view of the tradition of the “old woman” (omina/ōna) as a storyteller of monogatari. Based on this discussion, the chapter examines Nakagami's depiction in Sen'nen no yuraku (1982) of the aged roji woman, Oryū no oba, as a Burakumin omina. Furthermore, it discusses how Nakagami presents Oryū no oba's silenced voice. Oryū no oba has a special status that derives from her role as omina who passes down monogatari to the younger generation in the community. In contrast, the chapter considers Yuki and Moyo, two aged outcaste women who feature in the Akiyuki trilogy, as oba who can never assume the voice of community storyteller. Thus, this chapter investigates how Nakagami depicts the (im)possibility of these sexed women's voices speaking to or being heard by the community while also demonstrating how the writer presents an alternative representation of their voiceless voices.

This chapter examines the minority experience in Japan as a whole, by putting the Okinawan experience of minority in comparison with that of other such marginalized groups in the country, such as the ethnic Koreans, the Ainu, and so forth. It argues that a hierarchy exists that valorizes certain minorities while ranking others lower, leading to efforts by some to conceal, or minimize, whatever puts them in a category currently out of favor, and to associate themselves, as much as possible, with the majority, or with a different, more favored minority. Perceived hierarchies of status can also operate within minorities. And finally, the assignment of status to minorities can reveal paradoxical results.

The chapter offers an overview of the book starting with a summary of the history of Ainu, Zainichi, and Burakumin before posing the core puzzle of the book. It then examines literatures on the history of global human rights and their impact on local social movements, and situates the book’s approach in the broader scholarly approaches in the studies of social movements, human rights, and globalization. It then points to the three key theoretical contributions of the book: (1) the transformative impact of global human rights on local actors, (2) subnational variations in how global human rights affect local politics, and (3) the feedback mechanisms through which local movements influence global human rights institutions.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the volume and outlines the research question, the argument, and the methodological approach. The volume combines three broader discussions: the first one concerning the GJM, the Occupy Movement, and the World Social Forum process; the second one concerning international non-governmental organizations ([I]NGOs) in relation to the United Nations and the World Bank; and the third one concerning Dalit activists and Dalit feminists in South Asia working in collaboration with Burakumin activists in Japan. In this chapter the author positions her discussion within these three scholarly debates. She also points out links between the social movements in South Asia and Japan and social movements in other regions, such as the United States, Latin America, and Europe. The methods of transnational fieldwork and the intricate relation between activists and scholars are discussed at length.

Chapter 2 describes the background of the GJM and the World Social Forum process. A brief overview is given of the organizational aspects and how the concept of network has been used in social movement studies to situate this study in relation to scholars writing on the GJM and the Occupy Movement. Criticism from the outside against the GJM is explored, but also coming from inside the movement. Ethical similarities and organizational differences between the GJM and the Occupy Movement are outlined and explore how activists in these two movements belong within the same broader discourse, focussing on a global economic élite. The chapter ends by relating activists in South Asia and Japan to the GJM and the Occupy Movement and demonstrates how activists in these regions have been marginalized in the movements and largely ignored in the scholarly writings.

Chapter 4 is occupied with the knowledge production within the Dalit movement in India and the Burakumin movement in Japan. It presents a historical overview of these protest movements during the 20th century. The Dalit movement among the so-called Untouchables is a protest movement against caste discrimination; and the Burakumin, the largest minority in Japan, have also experienced discrimination similar to caste discrimination. These traditions of protests differ in some important aspects from those found among Latin American, European, and American activists in the GJM and the Occupy Movement. This chapter thus provides a historical context to understanding the involvement of Dalit activists and Burakumin activists in the GJM and the World Social Forum process during the 2000s. Moreover, it provides a historical context to understanding their day-to-day work in between the large World Social Forums.

Chapter 6 discusses theories about transnational feminism in South Asia generally, but more specifically it gives an overview of the history of Dalit feminism in India. The central importance of the Mumbai World Social Forum in 2004 is dealt with at length to highlight how Dalit feminists put feminism more generally at the core of the World Social Forum process. This is the chapter where the main ethnography about the local day-to-day work in between World Social Forums among activists and (I)NGO workers is to be found. It takes as its focal point the broader transnational network International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and presents three local ethnographies from within this network: first, ethnography from the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO) in Kathmandu, Nepal; second, from the office of IMADR–Asia Committee, in Colombo, Sri Lanka; and third, from among Burakumin networks in Osaka, Japan.