BURAKU DISCRIMINATION IS an issue that is difficult to define and there are several rival theories to explain its roots. However, what is certain is that its origins are connected to the status discrimination that has existed since the pre-modern era. So, when we start to consider the history of Buraku discrimination it is important and necessary to pin down the process of the formation of this status discrimination and its subsequent historical transformation. Moreover, Buraku discrimination is not something that came into existence in isolation but rather is a phenomenon that we need to understand in the context of the development of the Japanese people as a whole and something that has evolved on multiple levels. It is important then to understand it from the origins of the Japanese people in relation to discrimination among the aboriginal races.

STATUS IN THE SMALL STATES OF PRE-HISTORY

Homo Sapiens, the human beings who are the direct ancestors of all mankind including the Japanese people, first inhabited the islands of Japan some 35–40,000 years ago in the late old stone age (Palaeolithic period) according to the most recent research (Ueda, 2012a). This was a time of a lesser ice age when sea levels were much lower than they are now so that the region from the Indo-China peninsula across South East Asia was connected to the Asian continent and is referred to as Sundaland. The period around 20,000 years ago was particularly cold and the Yellow Sea, West and South China seas had all more or less dried up so that the islands of Japan were connected to the Asian continent. There is an influential theory which suggests that the people of Japan have their roots in the palaeolithic peoples of South East Asia who lived across Sundaland and who reached the Japanese archipelago from the Asian continent (Hanihara 1995). There were also other proto-mongoloid people in North East Asia in the late Palaeolithic era so it is possible that they too crossed into the islands of Japan (Omoto 1996). Whichever the case it is their descendants who formed the Jōmon people.