"The educational policies of the Japanese Empire" and "Male dominance in secondary education in Japan"

With:

Sophie Rainaut (PhD student, ENS, IAO/IFRAE)

"Colonial education and masculinity(s): the educational policies of the Japanese Empire, between assimilationism and gradualism (1918-1937)"

In pre-war Japan, the State textbook system imposed the use of identical textbooks, published by the Ministry of Education, in all metropolitan elementary school from 1903 onwards. These textbooks, particularly those on morality and reading, included lessons on gender differentiation, but were also permeated by gendered norms scattered throughout the characters. They thus enable us to analyze the formation of a masculine identity in young boys at school. But what happens to this analysis when we compare it with the colonial education system in Taiwan and Korea? The textbooks published by the colonial general governments differed from metropolitan textbooks in their difficult search for a balance between gradualism and assimilationism. Are metropolitan models of masculinity, particularly that of the soldier, found in the same proportions?

Yuki Ueno (PhD student, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, IFRAE)

"Male domination in secondary education in Japan: some results from fieldwork"

Secondary education (chûtô kyôiku 中等教育) in Japan constitutes the framework within which the gender separation imposed in elementary school between girls and boys is perpetuated and unconsciously amplified through the behavior of the students themselves. The aim of my work is to analyze two types of curriculum: the explicit curriculum, which is organized in the form of programs, including subject teaching and "life instruction" (seikatsu shidô 生活指導), and the latent curriculum, which is not intentional on the part of the teacher, but implicitly affects the development of pupils as human beings. In this talk, I will present findings from field observations in 2024 that are decisive for understanding the "theory of gender characteristics" (seibetsu tokusei ron 性別特性論), which is the fundamental thinking behind the separation of girls and boys in the school institution in Japan.

Organizers: Christian Galan, Marine Déplechin