No honour
Google Earth thought
that there would be no problem when it provided maps of historical Japan on its
web service.
However it seems that the move has opened a can of worms which
has now resulted in a government inquiry and angry accusations of
prejudice. The maps date back to the country's feudal era, when shoguns ruled
and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the caste system were
people called "burakumin," who were forced to live in isolation because they did
jobs associated with death, such as working with leather, butchering animals and
digging graves.
While the old villages have gone the descendants of
burakumin make up about 3 million of the country's 127 million people and they
still face prejudice from modern Japanese. One modern company regularly screens
out burakumin job seekers and will often do elaborate background checks to find
out.
However until Google Earth came out, employers did not know the
locations of the old villages where it is likely burakumin workers would come
from. One of the maps showed a Tokyo village being called "eta," a now
strongly derogatory word for burakumin that literally means "filthy mass." If
you then click on it you can see the modern streets and buildings that are
currently in the same area.