The Dissolution of Outcast Status and Outcast Property in Meiji Japan

This article analyzes Meiji government efforts to regulate the beef and rendering trades alongside the local response of the former kawata outcastes of Saraike Village (today Osaka Prefecture). In 1872, Sakai Prefecture, (now Osaka and Nara prefectures), issued new regulations for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities. As part of the implantation of these regulations, prefectural authorities investigated established rendering and beef production activities in former kawata communities within the prefecture. In the ninth month of Meiji 5 (1872), a prefectural official investigated the butchers and renderers of Saraike Village. When some among the former kawata community were discovered to be violating the prohibitions on mixing the meat of health cattle and already-dead animals, several villagers were arrested and all villagers prohibited from these trades until they could demonstrate compliance with new regulations. The extensive documentation this case left behind allows us to catch a glimpse into how the abolition of status-based property was navigated by rural kawata villagers. By focusing on the village level, I will show that those kawata that took over the rendering and butchering trades after the abolition of kawata status were in fact the same men who were circumventing status-based property in the Tokugawa period.