Dodging and Confronting Stigma

Dodging and Confronting Stigma examines the lives of people who were stigmatized or marginalized in Japan’s late classical and medieval ages. Often characterized as beggars, they in fact pursued a wide range of occupations and lifestyles, even while haunted by discrimination and exploitation. They developed skills, acquired property rights, and even manipulated the elite who controlled them, thereby achieving some degree of self-determination. Outcasts are frequently mentioned in the records of