
“Soul Food of Japan” – Buraku cuisine conceals a history of discrimination - alma88
http://ignition.co/511
======
apalmer
I am not really exactly buying into the full premise of this article. While to
a large degree the lack of exposure of this branch of japanese cuisine is
based on bias... It also is clearly based on the fact that these are the least
desirable cuts of flesh and offal from the least desirable livestock animals.

Much like sure you CAN really masterfully make something chittlins taste as
good as intestines can taste... its still going to be viewed as lower class
leftover scraps because thats really fundamentally what it is at its core.

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joolze
"The thirty-eight-year-old Yasui radiates a quiet pride. With his round face
and COMMANDING MUSTACHE, he conveys a stoicism..."

I just can't stop laughing at that description of that picture.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
It kind of detracts from the credibility of the rest of the article, doesn't
it?

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smegel
And I thought fried chicken cutlet with vegetable curry and rice was Japan's
soul food. It is one of my soul foods at least.

~~~
coldtea
Well, they have lots of comfort food. Katsu curry is only one of these.

------
JoeAltmaier
Cool food article.

Also, I get to add Buraku to the list that starts Ainu, Women and Foreigners.

~~~
CocaKoala
You have a list of things it sucks to be in Japan?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
OP was about discrimination. Buraku is way down that list.

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ashmud
Title begins with  (0x0008). Source page title does not appear to have it.

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johansch
"Discrimination"? Seriously?

~~~
song
Yes, Burakumin are still discriminated against.. Less so now than before, but
coming from a Dowa area is still seen as a negative, land prices in Dowa areas
are significantly cheaper, those neighborhoods are much poorer and there are
still quite a few parents who will strongly object to their daughter marrying
someone that comes from such an area.

It's not as bad as discrimination against Zainichi Koreans but it exists and
does affect the job prospect of Burakus.

I used to live south of Kyoto station which is a Dowa district and had friends
from this minority (as well as Zainich Korean friends). So I'm saying this
based on experience.

Back to the topic at hand, Saiboshi is delicious :)

~~~
johansch
I was thinking about the food, not the people.

For example, I discriminate against liver and cauliflower.

------
brobinson
The ignition.co spammer is back! I'm impressed that this account and the
others regularly hit the front page, if only for a short time.

Isn't there a better place for you to promote these articles? They don't
really fit HN.

~~~
DanBC
You should probably email hn rather than posting in the thread.

Why do you think this article doesn't fit on HN? What about it makes it a poor
fit? What articles should be on HN?

~~~
brobinson
I think whoever runs ignition.co or does marketing for it liked the traffic
boost they got from someone posting this article randomly:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802816)

Then created these accounts to drip feed more of their articles here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marmn)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alma88)

I mean, just look at the titles. They don't fit with the general theme of the
content which is usually posted on HN. This general focus of content on HN has
indeed become more muddied and low quality as time has gone on and it
approaches Reddit status, but I'm not ready to give it up yet.

EDIT: Ahh, I'm wrong. There's another account which predates the "moss"
submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ngym](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ngym)

So it's just spammers who have about 33% of their articles killed by the
system, and I suppose the rest are being flagged off the front page.

~~~
dang
Thanks for being concerned about the quality of HN. Here's what I'm pretty
sure was going on:

It's common for boutique publications like this to randomly get posted to HN
(often by excellent HN users with long track records). Someone at their office
notices the traffic, and they create accounts to start promoting their site
here. Obviously that's not a good fit for HN. I sometimes email them letting
them know that they should stop because our users will consider it spamming—or
alternatively, that they should join the community in earnest and post from a
diverse set of sources, including their own.

But that doesn't make the site itself spam. This class of publications often
produces articles of general intellectual interest, which is why a user like
nkurz would have submitted it in the first place. Such articles are welcome
here—they're neither off-topic nor a recent development, and it's good for HN
to be well-stocked with outlier stories.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11090064)
for another explanation re keeping HN weird.

