Untouchables in Japan?

Would you believe that in a country like Japan, which comes forth a very mature and homogenous society, there exist untouchables? Yes, even in Japan, when you scrape the surface you will come across a cast system which thrives.

And the tag of “untouchables” given to people is not very different from that in India - slaughtermen, undertakers, those working with leather and in other "unclean" professions such as sanitation are marginalized and even till date, those working in the Shibaura abattoir are “untouchable”.

The lowest of these outcasts, known as Eta, meaning "abundance of filth", could be killed with impunity by members of the Samurai if they had committed a crime. As recently as the mid-19th Century a magistrate is recorded as declaring that "an Eta is worth one seventh of an ordinary person". Though generally considered offensive, the term Eta is still in use today. Even in Japan the caste system was abolished was back in 1871 but it continues to exist with people getting marginalized.

This makes us wonder – caste system has got nothing to do with the maturity or development of a society; it is an innate human tendency to discriminate.