Acutally burakumin do not have any physical difference from the rest of the Japanese population. They have been discriminated against because of their jobs, and the only way to tell that someone was burakumin was to do a background check and see what their relatives' jobs were, where they lived (burakumin lived in segregated areas), etc.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin) has a pretty thorough article. Here (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5DE1F3BF935A2575BC0A963958260), here (http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/35323-burakumin-japan.html), and here (http://blhrri.org/blhrri_e/news/new138/new138-3.htm) are some interesting articles on burakumin, confirming that they are not visually different than the rest of the Japanese population.
I think the confusion may arise from the fact that buraku sounds similar to the English word black (which would be pronounced burakku in Japanese), and thus people assume that it refers to skin color. Wikipedia gives this definition of buraku: The term 部落 (buraku) literally refers to a small, generally rural, commune or a hamlet. People from regions of Japan where "discriminated communities" do not exist any more (e.g., anywhere north of Tokyo) may normally refer to any hamlet as a buraku, indicating that the word's usage is not necessarily pejorative.
That's not to say it's not a problem! Obviously it is. But it's not one based on skin color.
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Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin) has a pretty thorough article. Here (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5DE1F3BF935A2575BC0A963958260), here (http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/35323-burakumin-japan.html), and here (http://blhrri.org/blhrri_e/news/new138/new138-3.htm) are some interesting articles on burakumin, confirming that they are not visually different than the rest of the Japanese population.
I think the confusion may arise from the fact that buraku sounds similar to the English word black (which would be pronounced burakku in Japanese), and thus people assume that it refers to skin color. Wikipedia gives this definition of buraku: The term 部落 (buraku) literally refers to a small, generally rural, commune or a hamlet. People from regions of Japan where "discriminated communities" do not exist any more (e.g., anywhere north of Tokyo) may normally refer to any hamlet as a buraku, indicating that the word's usage is not necessarily pejorative.
That's not to say it's not a problem! Obviously it is. But it's not one based on skin color.