In this essay corner, I have discussed the diverse range of Burakumin. For example, there are cases in which people from non-Buraku areas move into Buraku; where nationality, registered honseki (domicile), residence, and marital relations intersect; where one parent is Burakumin while the other is not; and where Burakumin establish their livelihoods outside Buraku. Broadly speaking, there are more than twenty types of individuals who are regarded as Burakumin but are not “pure” Burakumin, or who appear exceptional when compared to the ideal, self-identified type of Burakumin. In other words, what I have observed is the phenomenon of the normalization of the exception.
Normally, an “exception” is defined in relation to a “rule.” However, when exceptions occur frequently, it becomes apparent that the so-called “rule” itself no longer adequately describes reality.
Thus, by examining exceptions, one can illuminate the constructive mechanisms through which systems and discourses are used to frame the world. Observing exceptional Burakumin, therefore, functions as a device for revealing the institutional boundaries of Buraku discrimination. “Exceptions,” then, render visible the contours—or the margins—of the norm.
Furthermore, when phenomena regarded as “exceptional” become numerous, they in fact come to represent the standard condition of reality. At this point, the original “norm” retains only symbolic or representational meaning. For example, even if the ideal of a “pure member of the inner (Buraku) community” continues to be upheld, in reality no one fully corresponds to that ideal. Eventually, the “pure inner Buraku” exists only as a conceptual notion, a platonic form of “pure inner Buraku.”.In this sense, the “exception” ceases to be peripheral and instead becomes a key concept for understanding the whole. The analysis of “exceptions” thus becomes the most effective approach to grasping the structural principles of communities and society.

Let me add one more point. The identity of the Burakumin has always been diverse, but it has essentially become even more so. Burakumin today are plural and heterogeneous: some possess an unwavering Buraku identity, others have a fluctuating one; some do not identify with the Buraku identity at all, and some remain uncertain. This diversity indicates that, even if community boundaries appear substantial, they are not fixed entities but socially constructed and mutable concepts. In other words, boundaries are institutionally and discursively reproduced, yet in the lived practices of individuals they are constantly negotiated and contested, producing inevitable “slippages.”

Accordingly, the distinction between “non-Buraku” and “Buraku”—that is, the binary mode of recognition—functions less as an empirical description of reality and more as a discourse for maintaining symbolic order. The very concept of the Buraku itself exemplifies the difficulty of defining community membership according to a single, unified criterion.