NYT article on a prominent Japanese politician of buraku (outcaste) origin and a little history of the class. The article suggests that the class goes back a thousand years, and in some places that may be true, but there is actually very little evidence from before about 1500. There’s been some very interesting scholarship in the last few years on the way in which outcaste groups could leverage their social utility — being the people responsible for executions and law enforcement meant that they were government functionaries — to greater status, though they were never able to actually leave their caste behind.