Local and global efforts for human rights education: a case from the Osaka Human Rights Museum

Abstract

Created by those involved in the liberation movement of Buraku people (members of a formerly outcaste group), the Osaka Human Rights Museum has been the most established human rights museum in Japan. I examine education at the museum as a product of the interaction between global and local efforts to promote human rights education, looking into how the curators have adopted and appropriated the universal concept of human rights according to changing strategies of human rights activism and education locally acted out in the context of Osaka, Japan. In doing so, I demonstrate how the concept of human rights is understood and implemented differently in different socio-cultural contexts.