Ishikawa Satsuki was only 15 years old when she first caught wind of the corruption ongoing in her little village at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The year was 1950, Satsuki was attending Ueno Middle School, and Japan was nearing the end of its years under US military occupation. “Democracy” was the watchword of the day, as Japan slowly emerged from the devastation of war and the traumas of its formerly militarized society; yet, in her own village, Satsuki was witnessing that very democracy being made a mockery.
She decided to speak out. In 1952, when, as a high schooler, she saw that the corruption was as alive as ever, she spoke out again.
The village, needless to say, did not take Satsuki’s activism with good cheer. Instead, she was subjected to intense pressure to recant her testimony. Worse, Satsuki was not the only one made to suffer for her speaking out. Her entire family was subject to an age-old rural tradition of censure: murahachibu, social ostracism.
What became known as the Ueno Village Shizuoka Prefecture Murahachibu Incident roiled the country’s newspapers and social halls. The presence of deep political corruption and feudal-era style strongmen in Japan’s rural spaces nearly a decade past World War II startled many; but worse, a young girl was being punished for standing up for the values the country now claimed to espouse.
Satsuki, however, refused to back down. In the face of intense pressure – the like of which is still a surprisingly common feature in Japan – she pushed back. In an interview, a simple quote seemed to interrogate the harmful social structures baring down on her family:
「私のしたことは間違っていたのでしょうか？」
“Do you believe that what I did was wrong?”
Murahachibu – the Gentle Tradition of Communal Ostracism
In 1952, Satsuki’s entire family faced an age-old means of communal punishment: ostracism.
Regarding the concept, Bunshun Online journalist Koike Atarashi wrote:
“The term “murahachibu,” meaning to be ostracised within a certain region, is surely a dead word. Or, at least many people would think this is the case. But the truth is quite different.” [1]
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Communal societies function by counting on each individual to do their part. In Japan’s rural spaces, there have long been numerous duties any given villager was expected to perform based on their place within the whole. In turn, they could expect to receive assistance from neighbors and partake of communal harvests, whether from the fields or the seas. But, within this context, stepping out of line could lead to harsh punishments. And in a communal setting, only exile could be worse than being ostracized. You’d have no access to assistance, to work, to commonly held lands or resources. To be ostracized was to be left socially and materially bereft.
The Eight Ostracisms
Murahachibu (村八分) literally means “eight parts of the village.” The explanation for the term’s origins is often said to come from the “ten common activities of village life.” Of those, someone subject to ostracism would be excluded from all but two: funerals and firefighting. (Both were considered so time-sensitive that even the ostracised were conscripted.) If a family was subject to murahacibu, they could not partake in any of the remaining eight activities: coming of age ceremonies, weddings, births, helping the ill, construction, fixing water damage, death anniversaries, or travel.
By the post-war, such societal punishments were deemed outmoded and feudalistic. But, as Ishikawa Satsuki would soon find out, murahachibu was still very far from having died out.
In some ways, this holds true even today.
In a Sleepy Shizuoka Village
You’d be hard-pressed to find the village of Ueno on a map; that’s because, in 1958, a mere six years after the village censured young Ishikawa Satsuki, it ceased to exist as an independent entity. Instead, it was absorbed into the larger city of Fujinomiya, today the 8th most populated city in Shizuoka Prefecture.
In the early 1950s, however, Ueno was still its own village, with its own local politics, economy, and social structure. To the northeast, Mount Fuji dominated the skyline of the 900 or so households with their 5300 people who called Ueno home. Villagers still toiled in the rice fields, with many working in silk cocoon farms. Local society was highly communal; you got by with help from your neighbors.
Those neighbors all belonged to a tonarigumi – an already antiquated form of neighborhood association formally established the previous decade during WWII. The tonarigumi had been a tiny module of civic mobilization during the war, and participation had been mandatory; the U.S. occupation banned tonarigumi in 1947. But in Ueno, these neighborhood cliques persisted, still wielding major power. Neighbors assisted each other, but they also put pressure on one another to toe the line.
At Ueno Middle School, Ishikawa Satsuki, the middle daughter of a farming family that had lived in Ueno for generations, was learning about the importance of democracy and the sovereignty of the masses. [3] And all the while, she saw the tonarigumi operating under some very different principles.
Political Machines in the Countryside
The early post-war was a difficult time throughout Japan; the economy was in tatters, most urban spaces remained terribly damaged from allied bombings, and society was changing at a rapid rate. From on high, the US Occupation GHQ dictated how Japanese society would now be organized; democracy and freedom of expression were to be enshrined at the highest levels. Despite the top-down democratization, many young people in Japan embraced their new freedoms and took democratic ideals to heart.
The US Occupation initially purged all those involved with the old Imperial regime; in only a few years, however, with the Cold War starting to heat up, an about-face occurred. Politicians, military officials, and powerbrokers, some whom had been jailed as potential war criminals, were allowed to retake the levers of power, all in the hopes of creating a materially strong Japan that could serve as a US ally against the USSR.
The conservative, pro-US Liberal Party emerged as the nation’s most powerful political organization, headed by pre-war politicians, many of whom had played major roles in the war. (Within a few years, it would evolve into the Liberal Democratic Party, which has held almost unbroken national power until this very day.)
Japan was now de jure democratic. Still, party machinery reached deep into the civic life of even rural places like Ueno. Party leadership whipped subordinates in the countryside to ensure votes were cast the right way. Company presidents would tell employees how to vote. In the countryside, village powerbrokers played the same role. And in Ueno, the tonarigumi was yet another arm of the local powerbrokers. [4]
Not Using That Vote? I’ll Take It
In 1950, Ishikawa Satsuki became aware of a level of corruption that went beyond policing one’s neighbor’s voting patterns.
Ueno Village had a peculiar system in place to help ensure the village voting results went as planned. This was known as kaedama voting (替え玉投票). The kaedama in question means “substitute”; it’s also the word used for an additional serving of noodles added to a customer’s remaining ramen broth. In political terms, it means one person using the vote belonging to another in absentia.
The head of each neighborhood association would go around to the households in their jurisdiction and enquire about which adults intended to vote. Their common refrain was “Thinking of abstaining? Then I’ll just go ahead and vote for you!” Within the neighborhood association, this was almost more an order than a “friendly” offer. The neighborhood association also passed around fliers asking members to bring unused voting admission tickets to the association head’s household.
The end result was that the tonarigumi headmen would end up with multiple voting passes. These were then used to allow the headman to enter the voting booth numerous times, casting each vote along party lines. Voting supervisors could clearly see this occurring, but turned a blind eye to the fraud. Meanwhile, the people of the village just assumed this was how things were supposed to work.
Ishikawa Satsuki thought otherwise.
Satsuki Decides to Act
In 1950, Japan held a nationwide Japanese House of Councillors election. The party machinery spun into motion from the urban capitals down to the smallest hamlets. In Ueno, too, the gears began to crank, and tonarigumi heads went around fraudulently collecting votes.
When Satsuki, 15, heard about the fraud, she was incensed. She knew someone had to call out this activity, happening so out in the open. At the time, she felt her only means of denouncement would be via her middle school newspaper. She wrote an article condemning the kaedama voting, and asking why it was being allowed to continue. School officials, however, discovered the subversive content of the article, and had all copies of the newspaper burned. Satsuki’s message did not get out, and the vote harvesting continued. Her righteous anger was left to simmer.
Two years passed. Satsuki’s attention was drawn elsewhere; she entered high school, and was engaged in the daily intrigues of teenage life. She earned the respect of her social studies teacher, Mr. Yamaka, who found her to be a hard-working and idealistic pupil. All this was happening as Japan was finally restored to sovereignty as the Occupation forces departed.
In 1952, Shizuoka Prefecture geared up for another round of voting, this time in a country with its own domestic and foreign policy. A special election had been called, and in Ueno Village, the power brokers began their work for Prime Minster Yoshida Shigeru’s Liberal Party. The headmen began to make their rounds.
Second Time’s the Charm
On the night of the vote, May 6th, 1952, Satsuki ran smack dab into the corruption within her little village. She would later recount the story to the Asahigraph magazine:
“I went home in the evening and asked my mom how the election was going… She told me that, at around 10 AM, the tonarigumi headman had been going door to door collecting votes from abstentors. See, on that day, there was a festival being held at the nearby Asama shrine. It seems most people, not really conscious of these things, were more concerned with the festival fireworks than going to the polls. It’s not hard to imagine that many of these people would abstain from voting. That’s because it’s the truth.
My mom refused the headman’s request and went out to vote. And what do you think she saw? …This headman-level fool asking people he recognized to let him vote in their place. On the way home, she met headman “K,” who had just come to our home. “K” said he had already handed over 30 votes to “Mr. M” at the village office. She heard it directly from “K” himself.”
When Satsuki’s mother, Kimiko, inquired about the vote substitution, she was told about how the same was going on throughout the various tonarigumi neighborhood blocks. She was informed that the measure was in place to “prevent people throwing away their votes.” Both mother and daughter were aghast at what had occurred.
A Young Democracy
Why were newly enfranchised voters fine with having neighborhood association leaders make their choices for them? Contemporary accounts claimed that most voters were not yet fully cognizant of the policies of whomever they might be voting for. More important was to vote along with one’s community, to not make the mistake of standing out from one’s friends and neighbors.
Contemporary jurist Ukai Nobushige wrote that:
“Japanese society involves a complex web of personal interrelationships, beginning with those that link individual members of each family and extending to most aspects of national life, including political attitudes. These relationships assume great importance at election times: a man ordinarily votes as his
[4] Ukai, Nobushige. (1953). Japanese Election Results Reconsidered. Pacific Affairs, 26(2), 139–146.
superior (within the family or in some other association) wishes him to.”
Satsuki herself felt similar societal trends were at work. She wrote that, “this truly is the tragedy of the countryside. The people are apathetic, and they lack the ability to see through this cruel conspiracy. This is a major issue with modernity. As the era changes, dislocations left from deep centuries are revealed at the heart of agricultural societies, left behind by societal progress. I wonder what will happen if things are left as they are. Those left unaware will continue to be at the mercy of the whims of influential men.” [1]
Taking a Stand
The fraudulent vote collection may have been particularly intense that year because of orders coming from on high. Prime Minister Yoshida was on his 4th consecutive year as Japan’s premier, and despite high marks from the departing US Occupation, was facing a great deal of inter-party criticism. He needed all hands on deck, and had decided to back agricultural darling Ishiguro Tadaatsu for the empty Shizuoka parliament seat, knowing his popularity in the countryside. This was despite Ishiguro not actually being a member of the Liberal Party; the local Shizuoka machinery would have to work extra hard to ensure their base knew to vote for this non-member.
Faced with such blasé manipulation of the electoral system, Satsuki first considered alerting the local committee for electoral administration. But, she thought, wasn’t it possible they were involved as well? She abandoned that idea. Reporting the issue to the village office seemed out of the question too, given the village government seemed to be a focal point for the fraud. Tacit approval of the vote collecting seemed to exist at all local levels. She didn’t trust the police either, since there had been various unpleasantries been the local officers and students of late.
The last time she’d been made aware of electoral fraud, she’d written about it in the school newspaper. Even that small gesture had been thwarted. This time, a bit older, and perhaps a bit bolder, she aimed higher. Satsuki wrote instead to the Asahi Shimbun, one of the nation’s major newspapers and a noted journal of record. She explained what others had reported seeing, and asked for a fact-finding mission to be carried out.
Word Gets Out – and the Murahachibu Begins
Two days later, an Asahi reporter was on hand. He spoke with Satsuki’s mother, whom he quoted anonymously; most of the other principals he interviewed, however, denied that anything untoward had taken place. The reporter’s article went out the next day in the Asahi Shizuoka morning addition, entitled “In Ueno Village, They Collected Voting Admission Tickets from Those Abstaining – Just What Were They Used For?”
At first, things were relatively quiet. Then, ten days after the article’s publishing, Satsuki got her first taste of what awaited her for stepping out of line.
While walking through her neighborhood, someone called out to the high schooler. It was the wife of a nearby neighborhood’s headman. What the woman told Satsuki sent shivers down her spine.
“People have heard that you’re the one who sent off a letter about electoral irregularities. Today, more than ten people were called into the police office, and they haven’t come home yet. But when they do, they’ll all be stopping by your place to express their ‘gratitude.’ …After all, you’ve brought shame upon your own village.”
Satsuki pushed back. “It’s because this is my village that I protested. I truly feel that having this sort of wrongdoing happen in my village is something to be upset about.”
The older woman retorted “But our village isn’t the only place where this goes on!”
The Widening Gyre
The story only expanded in scope from there. Reporters and National Rural Police swarmed Ueno, often parking their cars near Satsuki’s home. For the villagers of Ueno, this was a clear sign of the Ishikawa family’s complicity in their community’s growing shame. Further articles by the Asahi uncovered details on the vote rigging process; the investigations found evidence that would eventually point to 3/5ths of the Ueno votes from the by-election as being illegally submitted.
Bit by bit, the collective punishment of the Ishikawa family began. Rumors were spread to press outlets that Satsuki was a dangerous, radical idealogue and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. (She wasn’t.) Satsuki’s younger sister, a middle schooler, was subjected to taunts from classmates. “It’s the sister of the spy! Her sister’s a Red!”
Harvesting season had already begun, but no one came by to help with the Ishikawas’ fields (a normal practice during harvesting). No one offered to lend the Ishikawas their tools, either. The family was already struggling financially, with Satsuki’s father Ichiro having lost the rights to much of their previously held farmland. And yet other families would not accept Ichiro’s assistance at their own farms, an important source of additional income. Neighbors would ignore the family when they crossed their path.
(In fact, Ichiro’s poor financial planning and various loans were used as ‘proof’ of the Ishikawas’ innately negative family qualities by Ueno villagers writing to local newspapers. In the same breath, these letters alleged that no murahachibu was occurring.)
A New Story Eclipses the Last
On June 24th, some six weeks after election night, Asahi published an article that added a new layer to the growing scandal. This was the first story to highlight the abuse the Ishikawa family was now facing within their village; it was also the first to use the term murahachibu. Within a matter of days, the story of a village ostracising the family of a young girl who had spoken out in the face of injustice was everywhere. It was being covered across the country – and with a much greater focus than the voting scandal itself.
Letters supporting Satsuki began pouring into both news outlets and Satsuki’s own home. Think pieces and letters-to-the-editor asked how it could be that such a thing was occurring in modern Japan.
The shame afflicting Ueno Village was only growing. Local newspapers pushed back with stories smearing Satsuki’s father Ichiro, or holding onto the Shizuoka Legal Bureau’s decision that “no legal murahachibu” was occurring. (What they didn’t focus on was that the same report found that “a spontaneous breaking off of relations has put the livelihood and good name of the Ishikawa family in a precarious position.”) The local “Village Patriotism Sympathizers Association” strove to clear Ueno of its newfound infamy as “the most uncultured village in all of Japan.”
Not Without Her Supporters
Meanwhile, some members of the community made their support for Satsuki known. Some did so surreptitiously, telling Ichiro he could come help with the harvest late at night, “when we can’t be shamed by the prying eyes of our neighbors.” Others, like Satsuki’s teacher, Mr. Yamaka, spoke to the media.
“Ms. Ishikawa is a talented student. As a social studies teacher, I teach that one should always strive to do what is right. And yet, I find I am unable to do anything in the face of actual societal ills. It leaves me very troubled.” [1]
On July 2nd, the Shizuoka High School Teacher’s Union Fujinomiya Branch announced to the press that “We heap praise on the conduct of Ishikawa Satsuki. Showing her our strong support, we shall endeavor to do away with any oppression she faces.” On the same day, 1000 students from the local Student Association pledged to support Satsuki.
(Meanwhile, the Head of the Shizuoka Prefectural Board of Education opined that “as she is but a student, it’s necessary that her teacher be spoken to. It is my belief that the methods taken by Ms. Ishikawa Satsuki went too far.” Some right-wing papers began labeling Fujinomiya High School a “red school.”)
Structural Feudalism
For many the country over, the idea of modern murahachibu held darker portents than mere vote rigging. Full enfranchisement for men and women had been around for less than a decade; national sovereignty had only just been restored. Some degree of corruption was perhaps unsurprising. But that whole families were still subject to archaic communal punishment over whistleblowing? It struck at many people’s sense of social progress.
An anonymous article in the Oct. 1952 edition of the Shakkai Kyoiku magazine explicated these feelings of societal backsliding – and the larger problem it implied.
“I think this incident is nothing more than the tip of an iceberg that happened to poke through the water. This is because similar societal conditions and bases to those that gave birth to this situation exist in most towns and villages accross Japan. [By this, I mean that] most towns and villages in Japan have feudalistic social makeups. A general political shallowness affects not only the villagers of Japan, but also urbanites. An underdevoped political intuition and awareness aflicts [both rural and urban] society.”
Farewell to Ueno Village
The media frenzy continued for some time, as did the ostracism of the Ishikawa family. Eventually, though, things cooled down. The reporters packed up their cameras, and the public investigations ceased.
In 1954, Satsuki left Ueno Village. She’d graduated high school, and was accepted to Tokyo’s prestigious Hosei University. Not long after, her younger sister left for Tokyo as well – although she was only a high schooler herself. By 1956, their parents had also left Shizuoka Prefecture behind. The Ishikawa farmland was leased out; every member of the household now lived in Tokyo. Satsuki would later recall that her parents felt they couldn’t deal with the pressures of life in Ueno without their daughters.
But Satsuki also felt some regret at having left. In a 1959 article by Shukan Shincho magazine entitled “The Seven Years of the Murahachibu Girl,” she reflected that:
“I feel some hesitation over leaving the village. One has to wonder if it was the right thing to do, to have left in the midst of it all, as the person at the center of the murahachibu resulting from that letter I sent. I still have this feeling that tugs at me. Shouldn’t I have stood my ground, resisting the intangible pressures from the people of the village, until some other time?”
In the end, however, she felt she could do more good for rural communities as a whole by going to university and making something of herself. And so, she left the village that had rejected her behind.
Murahachibu: The Movie!
In March of 1953, a new, socially conscious film hit Japanese cinemas. It was a production of Kindai Eiga Kyokai, a company recently founded by director Kanedo Shindo. (The company is best known today for producing Kanedo’s classic horror films Onibaba and Kuroneko.) Its title was, fittingly, Murahachibu.
The film portrayed a fictionalized version of the Ueno Village Shizuoka Prefecture Murahachibu Incident, then still ongoing. In it, the Ishikawas were now the Yoshikawas; Satsuki became “Michie,” played by a young Nakahara Sanae in her first film role. The village mayor, Satsuki’s teachers and parents, and numerous other real-life individuals have cinematic stand-ins.
Strangest of all, however, is that part of the film was shot on-location in Ueno Village – while the ostracism was still in action! A subsection of the village population firmly opposed the film project, and sought to obstruct production. The director recalled that some young civil engineers led the planned obstructions, which they obstinately repeated time and again during filming.
Such sabatoge, however, only served to make claims of structural ostracism seem all the more likely.
The film’s tagline was that actual quote from Satsuki, still so associated with the incident: “Do you believe that what I did was wrong?”
Epilogue: Ostracism Lives On
For many in Japan in 1952, the ostracism of Ishikawa Satsuki’s family felt like an embarrassing anomaly linking modern Japan to a disreputable feudal past. And yet, it was far from the last time the term “murahachibu” would be employed during local targeting of community members by a larger whole.
In 2005, in Sekikawa Village in snowbound, northern Niigata Prefecture, a dispute over fish turned ugly. Prior to a scheduled charr fish hunting festival as part of the annual Obon festivities, some villagers let it be known that they would not be attending, due to preparation and cleanup distracting from personal holiday celebrations. This did not sit well with powerful individuals within the village; their response was “If these people intend to ignore village dictates, then they shall be subject to murahachibu.” They ordered 11 households stripped of their rights to food gathering and communal trash box usage.
The affected individuals fought back, taking three village headmen to court. The local Niigata court ruled that the murahachibu had indeed been invoked illegally; the judge ordered ¥2,200,000 in damages to be paid out. In 2007, the Tokyo High Court upheld the decision. A blow had been struck against undemocratic village power structures.
And the Wheel Keeps Turning
Beyond the ken of village life, collective punishment for perceived individual wrongs continues to plague parts of Japanese society. The threat seems to linger over anyone who might be involved in the right kind of scandal; observe this Wakayama Prefectural anti-marijuana comic, which shows a middle school girl’s family being shunned for her crime of smoking a joint. Neighbors point and jeer at the girl’s father, and mocking notes are posted to the family’s front door. (When I was a teacher, a similar comic warning of drunk driving was passed out to staff. In it, a teacher’s son was bullied because of his father’s drunk driving conviction. Both comics portray collective family punishment as a natural outcome of familial scandal.)
Similar issues occurred during the height of the COVID-19 crisis. While caseloads remained low, individuals who caught the disease were often subjected to ostracism; rocks were even thrown through windows. Locals sought to shame those who’d become infected for bringing trouble into their neighborhoods. Some healthcare workers were also subject to refusal of service, or their children were barred from attending school.
In the midst of all this, a scientific study showed that the term “murahachibu,” long fallen from common parlance, was having a renaissance on Twitter. People were expressing their fear of ostracism – especially if they accidentally brought the disease into their rural communities. [5]
Peer pressure remains a salient issue in modern Japan. In a country where worries about communal perception impact people on a more pressing basis than in some other societies, nothing quite embodies that worry like the idea of ostracism from one’s entire community. In some ways, the fear that one will end up like Ishikawa Satsuki – whose loved ones were punished for the actions she took for the sake of a larger societal good – still continues to motivate people to this very day.
And in that sense, murahachibu is still alive and well.
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What to Read Next:
The Geisha Who Took Down a Prime Minister
Sources:
[1] 小池 新. (2021/06/20). 選挙不正を起こした“日本一の非文化村”の「村八分事件」. 文春オンライン.
[2] 1952年（昭和27年） 上野村・村八分事件. Ueno Guide.
[3] (Aug. 25, 1952). JAPAN: A Rural Tragedy. Time.
[4] Ukai, Nobushige. (1953). Japanese Election Results Reconsidered. Pacific Affairs, 26(2), 139–146.
[5] Suzuki R, Iizuka Y, Lefor AK. (2021). COVID-19 related discrimination in Japan: A preliminary analysis utilizing text-mining. Medicine (Baltimore).
Dower, John. (1999). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II. Penguin Books.
