For roughly 20 years, from the 1970s to the 1990s, the BLL, as part of Dowa Project, operated communal sewing factories in Buraku nationwide. In Kochi Prefecture, one remains. It is known for productivity and fruitful collaboration with the BLL, due in part to the active involvement of a certain woman activist. As far as the author knows, there were five in eastern Hiroshima Prefecture. Those were nominally self-managed, but as they were operated under the Dowa project, the management body was the municipality concerned. It is assumed that the management structure is similar throughout the country.

These sewing factories were established vocational aid centers for Buraku-women who had difficulty finding work. More precisely, Buraku women needed to work more than ordinary women because the high rate of total unemployment among Buraku men was not improving. Why were sewing jobs chosen for them? In Hiroshima Prefecture, a sewing factory that took over the pre-war reconciliation movement was operated in the city of Hiroshima and was referred to when a later joint workspace was built under the Dowa project. The underlying stereotype was that the sewing is a woman's job. That idea was really quite simple. The nature of the work seemed to be mostly sewing and pressing of the phys-ed jersey trousers worn by boys and girls in their school classes. There were no examples of textile production or work in designing and cutting raw materials according to design.

Every workspace encompassed a female workforce that was regarded as further subordinate (uneducated, unskilled and disorganized) to the simple labor force. The intensity of labor was low and therefore the productivity of the workspace was low. In some cases, the employees included women not from Buraku-women, but they did not last long and were ultimately the main female labor force from the Buraku. In my interview, it emerged that women were gathered into these sweatshops because of “BLM ideology.” The idea was that: that “children's academic performance is uncertain because of problems in the mother-child relationship. Buraku women need to find stable daytime work.” One way to achieve this was to set up a workspace on the pretext of “rehabilitating” women working in cabarets. Then as now, seken (society) considered this work to be immoral, if not downlight evil. The BLL made it its business to force these women out of cabarets, and into daytime jobs “to repair their relationships with their children.” However, this only led to new hardship and misery. In Onomichi City, women said they were earning 7,000 yen a day because of tips from customers at the cabaret. That was drastically reduced to 650 yen, but they covered their dissatisfaction and insecurity with the communal consciousness of the Buraku Liberation Movement. They, however, were aware the sewing works was slave-like bondage. This is ironic, as they were aiming for human emancipation.

On the other hand, these women were also outstanding fighters who had awakened to the Buraku Liberation Movement. They ‘put up a fight’ with the prime contractor on the liberation theory for something. It was undoubtedly a militant struggle between the prime contractor, who wanted to improve productivity, and these women, who insisted on the development of humanity. In Hiroshima prefecture, however, productivity did not increase, and after the ‘bubble’ period, the production base was moved overseas and closed down with the end of the Dowa project.

Some of these women are over 75 years old, yet still unable to receive a pension. What makes their situation so grave is that they are, in effect, excluded even from the very notion of poverty—treated as if they do not exist. In other words, they are abandoned to die. Their existence as a social category is being erased, rendered invisible once again. With incomes so limited that they cannot even afford a mobile phone, it is difficult to check on their welfare. They become beings who “seem to exist,” yet are denied recognition as living persons.

There is one ray of sunshine, however. Many of the sewing works owner-contractors operate profitably to this day.