River With No Bridge

The River With No Bridge (Hashi no nai kawa) explores with outspoken frankness a subject still taboo in Japan: the intolerance and bigotry faced daily by Japan's largest minority group, the burakumin.

Racially no different from other Japanese, over the centuries the burakumin have been cruelly ostracized for their association with occupations considered defiling.

Spanning the years 1908 to 1924, the original six volumes of this novel trace the developing awareness of burakumin of their rights and dignity as human beings.

Volume 1, translated into English for the first time in 1990, is a story about childhood in a burakumin village.