In the buraku of Kobe, the nicest houses -- gaudy American-style homes with wide porches and Mercedes-Benzes in the driveway -- belong to yakuza bosses. As a result, the "success stories" whom children in the buraku see as they grow up are often mobsters.

To be sure, there have been many brilliant buraku youngsters who have grown up to be doctors, lawyers, athletes and politicians. But they melt away into the overall society, keeping their background quiet, and so they do not serve as role models.

One of Japan's best-known politicians is secretly a burakumin, according to several buraku social workers. This politician, who has held major Cabinet posts, was horrified when a reporter called his office to ask for an interview on the subject. By all accounts, the buraku connection could still hurt him at the polls, and so he refused to go public.

Partly because burakumin are so invisible, and because mobility is breaking down the barriers that used to keep them apart, many Japanese believe that burakumin will become assimilated over the coming decades.

Yet for now, the progress is only partial.

The daughter-in-law of Mr. Okuda, the dry cleaner, was initially happy to talk about how she had married a burakumin and moved into the buraku. She even posed for a photo in the dry cleaning shop, a symbol of integration in the new Japan.

Then she decided she did not want people to know after all that she had moved into a buraku.

"So," she said, "don't use my name or my picture in the paper."