Enclosure and the Community of the Commons

Chapter 2 examines how conflicts that erupted between burakumin and ippanmin communities following the Japanese government’s enactment of land enclosures in the 1920s produced and reinforced colonial sensibilities in the Ise region of Okinawa’s Mie prefecture—the religious heart of the nation. These communities reflected a traditional, hierarchical system of castes. While the new enclosures destabilized many agrarian communities through the contraction and privatization of vast tracts of communally held and managed lands, they also produced new distinctions between racialized farm households. The chapter explores the Asama struggle, which began in 1927 after the expulsion of burakumin communities in Asama from the commons, following the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce’s reorganization of commonly held forestlands.