Notes on Contributors
Hideo Aoki
is the Chief Director of the Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics. He has published research notes, translations, and articles on homelessness, buraku issue, and Japan’s war, including Japan’s Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless (Trans Pacific Press, 2000), and “Marxism and the Debate on the Transition to Capitalism in Prewar Japan,” (Critical Sociology 47, 2021).
Akira Kobayakawa
is the Director of the Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics, and the Director of the Hiroshima Buraku Liberation Institute. He studies contemporary Buraku. Not incidentally, he lives in a Buraku, and is a BLM activist. He has compiled modern and contemporary materials on Buraku issues and has also published his own work. His English-language papers include: “Quiet Buraku Discrimination: the Reproduction of Discrimination under Governance of Neoliberalism” (Social Theory and Dynamics 1, 2016); “Japan’s Modernization and Discrimination: What Are Buraku and Burakumin?” (Critical Sociology 47, 2021); and, “Orientalism in Buraku Studies: through the Examination of Outcast” (Social Theory and Dynamics 3, 2022).
Risa Kumamoto
is a faculty member of the Human Rights Research Institute at Kindai University. She examines Buraku women’s narratives and historical data relating to the Buraku liberation movement and has published a book in Japanese titled A Study of the Formation of Buraku Women’s Agency (Kaiho Shuppansha, 2020). Her current research focuses on Buraku and Dalit women’s liberation movements and intersectional discrimination rooted in descent, class, gender, and sexuality. She works with community organizers advancing welfare, education, and employment issues for Buraku communities. She also works with educators involved in human rights and educational programs for racially and sexually minoritized students.
Midori Kurokawa
is Professor Emeritus at Shizuoka University. Her main academic interests are in late modern and contemporary Japanese history, particularly the history of ideas and the history of the Buraku. Her works include The Buraku Issue in Regional History: The Case of Modern Mie (Kaiho Shuppansha, 2003), Depicted Buraku: Self-Image and Images of the Others in Films (Iwanami Shoten, 2011), Imagined ‘Race’ (Yushisha, 2016), A Biography of Takeuchi Yoshimi (joint authorship, Yushisha, 2020), A History of the Perceptions on the Buraku Issue (Iwanamishoten, 2021), Enlarged Edition of a History of the Modern Buraku (Heibonsha, 2023), Born in a Buraku: Kazuo Ishikawa talks about the Sayama Incident (Iwanamishoten, 2023), and A Biography of Maruyama Masao (Yushisha, 2024), among others.
Eiji Okada
is the former chairman of the Hiroshima Prefectural Federation of the Buraku Liberation League. He has been active in that organization for 56 years and has organized numerous denunciation struggles against. In addition, he has called on the state and local authorities to correct disparities in employment, education and the life environment caused by Buraku discrimination. He served as policy secretary to Tatsukuni Komori (1932–2021), a member of the House of Representatives and a Burakumin, who continuously demanded the elimination of discrimination against the Ainu, Zainichi Koreans, and the disabled, as well as Burakumin. His articles include “Buraku Liberation Movement Caught by State Control: with Attack of Neo-liberalism and Appeasement Policy” (The Bulletin of Hiroshima Buraku Liberation Research Institute, No. l7, 2011), and “A Consideration on Discrimination Cases Occurred in Succession and Their Background in Hiroshima Prefecture” (The Bulletin of Hiroshima Buraku Liberation Research Institute, No. 20, 2014).
Shinji Sakamoto
is Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Intercultural Japanese Studies at Otemae University. His research interests span living improvement movements in Japanese rural society, Buraku women’s life history, and social development of the bottom people in Global South. His works in English include “Rivalry and Superiority in Village Woman’s Life: a Case Study on Living Improvement in Postwar Japan” (Social Theory and Dynamics 4, 2023) and “Microcredit Enhances Informalization: the Outcome of Governmentality in Chittagong Fisher Society” in: The Bottom Worker in East Asia: Composition and Transformation under Neoliberal Globalization, Hideo Aoki and Tomonori Ishioka, eds. (Brill, 2023).
Shingo Tsumaki
is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business Administration at Ryukoku University. His specialty is sociology. He has many articles on the realities of residents of Buraku areas, young people in unstable employment, and people living as homeless. His works include “Kankei-sei no Syakai Byouri” [“Social Pathology of Relationships”] (co-authored, 2016), “Samayoeru Toshi Osaka: Toshin Kaiki to komyuniti” [“The Wandering Metropolis of Osaka: ‘Return to the City Center’ and Community”] (co-authored, 2019), and “Iwanami Koza Syakaigaku (Roudo to Hinkon)” [“Iwanami Course Sociology (Labor and Poverty)”] Vol. 6 (co-authored, 2024).