By NORIMITSU ONISHI


KYOTO, Japan - For Japan, the crowning of Hiromu Nonaka as its top leader would have been as significant as America’s election of its first black president.


Despite being the descendant of a feudal class of outcasts, who are known as buraku and still face discrimination, he had dexterously occupied top posts in Japan’s governing party and served as the government’s No. 2 official. The next logical step, by 2001, was to become prime minister.


But not everyone in the party was ready for a leader of buraku origin. Taro Aso, the current prime minister, made his views clear in a closed-door meeting in 2001.“Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?”he said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who was there.


Mr.Kamei said he recalled thinking that“it was inappropriate to say such a thing.”But he and the others in the room let the matter drop, he said, adding,“We never imagined that the remark would leak outside.”But it did? spreading rapidly among the nation’s political and buraku circles. And more recently, as Mr.Aso became prime minister just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama’s victory, the comment has become a touchstone for many buraku.


Many wonder just how far they have come since Japan began carrying out affirmative action policies for the buraku four decades ago, mirroring the American civil rights movement? If the United States could elect a black president, they ask, could there be a buraku prime minister here?


The questions were not raised in the society at large, however. The topic of the buraku remains Japan’s biggest taboo .


The buraku - ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese - are descendants of Japanese who, according to Buddhist beliefs, performed tasks considered unclean. Slaughterers, undertakers, executioners and town guards, they were called eta, which means defiled mass, or hinin, nonhuman. Forced to wear telltale clothing, they were segregated into their own neighborhoods.


The oldest buraku neighborhoods are believed to be here in Kyoto, the ancient capital, and date back a millennium. That those neighborhoods survive to this day and that the outcasts’ descendants are still subject to prejudice speak to Japan’s obsession with its past and its inability to overcome it.


The buraku were officially liberated in 1871, just a few years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. But as their living standards and education levels remained far below national averages, the Japanese government passed a law to improve conditions for the buraku in 1969. By the time the law expired in 2002, Japan had reportedly spent about $175 billion on affirmative action programs for the buraku.


In a buraku neighborhood north of central Tokyo, nothing differentiates the landscape from other middle-class areas. Now newcomers outnumber old-timers. The old-timers live in fear that their roots will be discovered, said a 76-year-old woman who spoke on the condition that she not be identified.“Me, too, I belong to those who want to hide,” she said.“I’m also running away.”


Here in Kyoto, some had not forgotten about Mr. Aso’s comment. “That someone like that could rise all the way to becoming prime minister says a lot about the situation in Japan now,”said Kenichi Kadooka, 49, who is a professor of English at Ryukoku University and who is from a buraku family.


Still, Mr.Kadooka had not let his anger dim his hopes for a future buraku leader of Japan.“It’s definitely possible,”he said.“If he’s an excellent person, it’s just ridiculous to say he can’t become prime minister because he just happened to be born a buraku.”

Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.