Modern School as Apparatus with Sex Education : historical analysis of discourses on the difference between co-education and single-sex education in Prewar period of Japan

The historical studies on sex education in Japan have depicted that there was almost no sex education at school, in Prewar period of Japan. That is owing to their definition of sex education as the transmission of information, knowledge, and value about intercourse and gendered body, or as the prohibition of sexual behavior. They have discussed only that what they define as sex education didn\u27t exist. By redefining sex education as educational discourses and practices which constitute the condition of the experiences of sexuality and gender relation of young people, Couldn\u27t I represent modern school in Prewar Period of Japan as equipped with sex education ? In this paper, I aim to examine the process whereby school had become the apparatus equipped with sex education. In order to examine this process, I focus on the transition in the intention attributed to the practice (co-education or single-sex education) through analysing the discourses on the difference between co-education and single-sex education from early 1870s to about 1930, when co-education was not regarded as ordinary but as uncommon and dangerous. The transition is as follows : (1) early 1870s : the intention of the practice isolating boys and girls (same as single-sex school), which was only requseted, was to teach the gender different curricula. (2) late 1880s : the intention attributed to the practice, which is not only keeping away boys and girls (single-sex education) but also putting them close (co-education), was to produce men and women who had the very different desirable character and to eliminate the sexual from school. (3) 1903-1931, mainly Interwar Period : the intention attributed to the practice, which is not only keeping away boys and girls but also putting them close, was to construct the united subject of sex/gender/desire thorough policing desire and identity. These findings show that during the first 30 years of 20th century, mainly Interwar Period, school had become the apparatus surrounded with the discourses and practices which make the subject of sex/gender/desire normal ; that is the apparatus equipped sex education