Google Earth Maps Out Discrimination Against Burakumin Caste In Japan

The map showed how old ghettos relate to the 21st-century streets

From Times Online:

A handful of innocent-looking antique maps, one offensive word and tens of thousands of offended “untouchables” have plunged Google into an unspoken class war that has raged in Japan for centuries.

Despite its ambition to be the cartographer of the internet age, the search engine has lumbered into one of the darkest corners of Japan — the bigotry of mainstream Japanese society towards the burakumin, the “filthy mob”, whose ancestors fell outside the caste system of the 17th-century samurai era.

By allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto on its Google Earth service, the search engine shows how the old ghettos relate to the 21st-century streets.

That, critics say, is perfect ammunition to hurt descendants of the people who lived there 400 years ago.

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