burakumin
burakumin noun: a member of a Japanese social minority group, descendants of feudal-era outcasts.
Noun
burakumin (plural burakumins or burakumin)
- A member of a Japanese social minority group, descendants of feudal-era outcasts.
- Since the early twentieth century, the burakumin have had strong liberation movements that have won many concessions for the group, but which have also, through their sometimes quite violent activism, further alienated many mainstream Japanese.2003, Colin Mackerras, Ethnicity in Asia, page 52
- Before it was levelled, Nagata was home to about half of Kobe’s 20,000 Korean residents, as well as Japan’s largest ghetto of burakumin. The word means ‘hamlet people’ though its mere mention usually draws instant embarrassment.2011, Peter McGill, “Short Cuts”, in London Review of Books, 33.VII
Forms of burakumin
| plural | burakumins |
|---|---|
| plural | burakumin |
Origin of burakumin
Borrowed from Japanese 部落民, from Middle Chinese 部落 (bu^X lak, “tribe”) + 民 (mjin, “people”).
Questions about burakumin
- What does burakumin mean?
- Burakumin means a member of a Japanese social minority group, descendants of feudal-era outcasts.
- What part of speech is burakumin?
- Burakumin is a noun.
- What is the plural of burakumin?
- The plural of burakumin is burakumins.
Words near burakumin in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: burakumin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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