Culturally contested corporeality: Regulation of the body in New Zealand and Japanese early childhood education

Abstract

Children’s bodies occupy a culturally contested space in the early childhood arena. In New Zealand, children’s bodies have increasingly become the focus of regulation. The early childhood centre has become a site of constant surveillance, turning teachers into ‘disciplinary individuals’ who are internally controlled by their own behaviour. This increased regulation mirrors that of other Western contexts. In contrast, Japanese early childhood education still places children’s bodies at the centre of preschool life. Shared embodied experiences serve to consolidate certain traits and qualities identified as Japanese and intimate physical contact is valued. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at an early childhood centre in New Zealand and a kindergarten in Japan. We argue that in New Zealand early childhood circles, the child’s body has become the focus of civilising routines which limit physical touch between adults and children, and minimise attention to the body. Asian early childhood education contexts are often depicted as overly controlling. However, we suggest that while Japanese children’s bodies may be subject to routine and management, they are viewed through a lens of nostalgia and innocence which allows for greater freedom of the corporeal.

Keywords

Children’s bodies embodied experiences Japan early childhood education New Zealand early childhood education regulation

Introduction

Early childhood education was once a protected site where children’s bodies could flourish, but early childhood centres have increasingly become spaces where the body of both child and adult are scrutinised and disciplined to the point that the body appears in danger of vanishing in Western contexts (Bresler, 2004; Johnson, 1997; Shapiro and Shapiro, 2002; Surtees, 2008; Tobin, 2004).

Instead, children’s bodies have increasingly become the focus of surveillance and regulation (Foucault, 1995), as well as sites of anxiety and fear in the face of rising debate over appropriate policy and practice (Phelan, 1997; Piper and Stronach, 2008). Children’s bodies have been repositioned as embodying a moral panic (Farquhar, 1997; Jones, 2001; Robinson, 2008; Tobin, 1997), which has impacted on both pedagogical practice and the quality of research able to be conducted around this issue (Montgomery, 2009).

We argue that in New Zealand early childhood circles, like other Western contexts, the child’s body has become the focus of civilising routines, which limit physical touch between adults and children, and minimise attention to the body and its products (Burke and Duncan, 2015). The New Zealand early childhood centre has become a site of constant surveillance, turning teachers into ‘disciplinary individuals’ (Foucault, 1995: 227) who are internally controlled by their own behaviour. In Japan, the body is also subject to routine and management, but in contrast to New Zealand, where children’s bodies conjure up feelings of anxiety, Japanese children’s bodies are still viewed through a lens of nostalgia and innocence (Creighton, 1997; Robertson, 1988). The strength of this ideology, known as furusato in Japanese, persists despite a growing trend towards personal privacy and changing notions of child safety.

Research in Western contexts (Farquhar, 1997; Jones, 2001; Montgomery, 2009; Robinson, 2008), contrasts with studies carried out in Japan, which still places children’s bodies at the very centre of the early childhood experience. Ben-Ari (1997) argues that preschool experiences such as co-sleeping, eating and bathing together serve to embody certain traits and qualities identified as Japanese. Walsh (2004) suggests that the Japanese child is viewed essentially as a physical self whose body is pivotal to intellectual development. Hendry (1986) and Lebra (1976) have stressed the importance of intimate physical contact both within families and in the context of early childhood education. This bodily contact is seen as a natural and necessary part of a child’s development. In Japanese early childhood centres it is common to see teachers lying down with a child who is having trouble nodding off at naptime, jokes between teachers and children about bodily functions and body parts, or a lone teacher assisting a child with toileting.

Methodology

Data is drawn from ethnographic research carried out at Kaimai Kindergarten in suburban New Zealand and Oka Kindergarten in rural Hokkaido, Japan (Burke, 2013; Burke and Duncan, 2015). Ethnographic researchers conduct fieldwork within the culture(s) they are studying, collect data on the basis of participation and observation, and then use theory to unpack this data (Ben-Ari and Van Bremen, 2005). The study draws on Joseph Tobin’s Preschool in three cultures (PS3C) methodology (Tobin et al., 1989, 2009), which utilised film to present comparative views of early childhood education through the eyes of teachers.¹

Fieldwork consisted of 1 month spent filming and observing at Kaimai and Oka Kindergartens, and concentrated on the experiences of a class of 4-year-old children. The edited videos were first screened to teachers of the ‘insider’ culture, then, after subtitling, to teachers of the ‘outsider’ culture. This means that Kaimai teachers first viewed ‘their own’ video, then the Oka video, and vice versa. Finally, to address issues of typicality, the videos were shown to focus groups of early childhood teachers and academics in both countries. Seven focus group sessions were held in New Zealand (74 participants in total) and nine in Japan (75 participants in total).² All of these discussions were filmed and formed the basis for analysis, using a ‘classic analysis strategy’ (Krueger and Casey, 2009: 118).

Using visual methods to reflect on comparative material is a powerful way to reveal hidden cultural assumptions. The video-cued method works to collapse and accelerate the traditional ethnographic fieldwork process as the videos provide a focus for discussion, and help reduce the kind of ambiguity that can occur when interviewing across cultural contexts. The analysis also draws on the ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1983) of the 6 years Rachael spent living and teaching in Japan, and through the experiences of her three children attending Japanese kindergartens.

Constructing the body

In this first section, we draw on a vignette from Rachael’s fieldwork to explore the ways in which children’s bodies are regulated in each of the two cultural contexts. The Oka Kindergarten video was shot during Japanese summer, when teachers take advantage of the warm weather to provide outdoor water play activities. While preparing the children for this activity, the teacher jokes with them about the appropriate manner to get undressed and changed, drawing attention to parts of the body such as the breasts (oppai) and penis (chinchin) which are usually covered by clothing. She explains the children will soon all be ‘completely naked’ (zuponpon) before they put on the singlets and underwear worn for this kind of activity. The class of 33 children run about in various states of undress before finally completing the task of changing, and head outside to play.

Following a boisterous water play session, the children are instructed to line up according to gender, before they are given instructions about removing their wet clothing. In their two lines, the children then wait naked as the teacher carefully sprays the hose over each young body and kneels down to wash away any sand from their feet. This procedure takes over twenty minutes, during which time the children remain lined up naked in full view of the adjacent road and park. Gradually, each child moves back inside the classroom to conduct the undressing routine in reverse.

In Japan, this scene was of no significance to Oka Kindergarten teachers when they analysed their centre’s video prior to its viewing by Kaimai Kindergarten teachers. In fact, when Rachael asked the Japanese teachers to comment on the footage, they were puzzled by what they were being asked to address. However, it was significant, even shocking, to teachers in New Zealand where early childhood institutions have changed their policies and practices in recent years in order to stem public concerns relating to potential sexual abuse of children. As a result, it is unlikely children would be naked for any length of time in a New Zealand early childhood setting. As a researcher, Rachael had expressed her own reservations about the ethics of filming the naked children despite the Oka teachers’ assurances it was not inappropriate. Asian early childhood education contexts are often depicted as overly controlling from Western perspectives (Park, 2013). We suggest that while Japanese children’s bodies may be subject to routine and management, they are viewed through a lens of nostalgia and innocence which allows for greater freedom of the corporeal (Burke and Duncan, 2015).

The naked child in Japanese early childhood settings

While some of the Japanese teachers noticed regional differences in the way children’s naked bodies may be approached, none of them expressed shock at the water play scene described above. Some scholars have concluded that regional differences between early childhood centres across Japan do not exist, insisting that experiences of both parent and child are relatively homogeneous (Ben-Ari, 2002; Kotloff, 1998; Peak, 1989). However, Hendry (1993) notes that most of these studies have been carried out in the Kanto region, therefore there may be differences in other prefectures throughout the country. Holloway (2000) has also remarked on the diversity of Japanese centres across the nation.

Contrasting responses to the water play scenes certainly seemed to support a view of rural centres as less prone to urban pressures and demands. During viewing, many of the teachers sighed wistfully and remarked how lucky the children were to be growing up in Hokkaido where life was still so free and surrounded by nature. With tinges of nostalgia, several teachers described the scenes as replicating ‘Japan in the old days’. Views on children’s bodies may vary across Japan according to ideological axes, but the naked body remains a powerful symbol of a nostalgic past (Chen, 1996).

The body as nostalgic symbol

The island of Hokkaido (where fieldwork was conducted) retains a utopian image for the Japanese public, especially those in crowded, urban areas who envisage the area as culturally and environmentally distinct from the rest of the country. In metropolitan areas, Rachael’s participants nostalgically linked rural communities to a romanticised, less threatening era for children and parents. Clark (1994) has discussed the phenomenon of Japanese describing aspects of culture that they believe are more faithfully replicated or preserved in other parts of the country.

Nostalgia for a more ‘authentic’ lifestyle has become personified in the ideology and symbolism of furusato (home village or native place) that has become increasingly ubiquitous throughout post-war Japan. The notion of furusato is associated with a rural landscape, an agrarian existence, and a community-based social life that shaped a shared sense of belonging (Creighton, 1997; Love, 2007; Moon, 2002). Robertson (1988) has linked the growing cultural significance of furusato ideology to a feeling of ‘nostalgia for nostalgia, a state of being provoked by a dissatisfaction with the present on the grounds of a remembered, or imagined, past plenitude’ (p. 495).

Viewed through the lens of furusato ideology the unclothed child’s body takes not a menacing form, as it might in a New Zealand context, but a nostalgic, benign objectification. Many Japanese teachers around the country made implicit reference to the wish to return a less constrained existence, both professionally and personally. Contained within this desire is the continuing cultural relevance of the skinship ideology which emphasises the importance of physical contact.

The ideology of skinship

The origin of the term skinship is linked to research by Caudill (1972) who argued that the Japanese mother views the baby as an extension of herself, therefore verbal communication is limited in favour of physical contact (cited in Schooler, 1996). Picone (1989) suggests that within this cultural ideology the bodies of mother and child become irrevocably linked, to the extent that mothers are understood as ‘constantly recreating or preserving her children’ (p. 485) well beyond the months of pregnancy. Skinship is an integral part of many daily activities carried out within the home such as co-sleeping, breast-feeding, nonverbal communication and bathing together (Ben-Ari, 1997; Tahhan, 2014). In the early childhood setting too, this close physical contact is seen as a valuable means of embodying the group experience. Here, the emphasis is firmly on intimacy rather than sexuality. This kind of interaction is not limited to kindergarten children and their teachers; it is a feature of many Japanese organisations (Ballon, 2011; Clark, 1994; Hendry, 1999; Kondo, 1992; Rohlen, 1974).

The cultural logic of the collective unclothed body

However, there are signs that Japanese attitudes to the collective unclothed body are changing amid rising perceptions of personal privacy (Clark, 1994; Guichard-Anguis, 2009). Tobin et al. (2009) identify this shift as ‘a form of embourgeoisement, the spread of middle-class Western styles, values, and notions of the self to other classes and cultural contexts’ (p. 119). They argue that like the public bath (sentō) and hot springs, early childhood centres are one of the few sites in which contemporary Japanese can embody pleasure in a public context. They also see these opportunities as diminishing, making early childhood settings even more significant for maintaining or reviving cultural values and practices that are either threatened or need to be restored.

While Oka Kindergarten’s practice of organising children in a naked state was not common and some of the respondents found it surprising, the overwhelming response was one of approval due to the implicitly understood and shared ideals of skinship and bodily freedom. Japanese teachers made links between children’s unclothed bodies and traditional cultural values which they saw as eroding under multiple pressures: urbanisation, parental demands, environmental risk, and the shrinking family unit. The practice of allowing children to interact naked in a Japanese early childhood setting may not be common, but the ‘cultural logic’ remains pervasive (Tobin et al., 2009: 9).

Regulating the body in New Zealand early childhood settings

Although New Zealand may be regarded as a liberal environment in terms of the physical body (Carr-Gomm, 2010), communal nakedness is not a part of New Zealand cultural identity (Barcan, 2004; Morris, 1992). Despite this, it was once common to allow children to play naked in New Zealand centres, but in recent years not only has the unclothed child become much rarer he or she has the potential to incite danger and suspicion within the early childhood environment (Jones, 2001). These fears, and the state policies that accompany them, have become ingrained in the cultural fabric of the modern early childhood setting.

The issue of touch in the New Zealand early childhood context has become entangled in the changing perception of the space ‘between the bodies of the teacher and the child’ (Jones, 2001: 9). While the rising anxiety and regulation associated with children’s bodies has been labelled a moral panic (Jones, 2001; Farquhar, 2001), it is a phenomenon common to other Western nations as well (McWilliam, 2003; Phelan, 1997; Piper and Stronach, 2008).

Duncan (1999) has pointed out that the concerns of most New Zealand kindergarten teachers do not centre on fears about child abuse occurring, or the trustworthiness of their colleagues, but rather the threat of an allegation of child sexual abuse. She suggests that much of the current climate of fear and anxiety stems from the 1993 trial of Peter Ellis, a Christchurch childcare centre worker convicted of 16 charges of sexual abuse against children (McLoughlin, 1996). After the trial many regular practices carried out at early childhood centres, such as a lone adult changing a nappy or supervising children on a walk, came to be viewed with suspicion. The early childhood sector swiftly developed policies to allay public fears and after a period of consultation a code of ethics was also released (Combined Early Childhood Union of Aotearoa, 1993; Early Childhood Education Code of Ethics National Working Group, 1995).

Constant surveillance

Drawing on Bentham’s Panopticon, Foucault (1980) describes a state of constant visual attention by which ‘people turn themselves into self-observing subjects who are controlled inwardly by their own constraints and actions’ (Duncan, 1999: 245). The New Zealand early childhood setting has become a site of constant surveillance, both in structural terms as buildings are redesigned to open viewing and in terms of policy. The teachers are also internally regulating their gaze; reproducing safe and controlled behaviour as expressed in child protection documents yet all the while mindful of powerful public opinion expressed through media and community outlets (Piper and Stronach, 2008). Through a process of assessment, coordination, and ultimately, surveillance, the teachers emerge as ‘disciplinary individuals’ who have been created by these techniques of power (Foucault, 1995: 227).

Normalisation of the clothed body

For Kaimai Kindergarten teachers, the feelings of being under constant surveillance were clearly omnipresent even when the children, their parents or members of the wider community were not present. As articulated by Foucault (1981, 1995), the teachers had come to internalise and enforce the belief that viewing images of naked children’s bodies was not only inappropriate, it was quite possibly dangerous. This point was emphasised during a screening of the Japanese video at Kaimai Kindergarten one evening, when the video froze on the image of a naked boy’s bottom. The group quickly pointed out that the video needed to be moved on to a more appropriate point. In contemporary New Zealand, the threat of child sexual abuse allegations is the omnipresent threat, which serves to both reproduce disciplined individuals (Foucault, 1980) and regulate the adult gaze. The child’s body is also subject to these diffuse forms of power rendering the naked body as a menace to order (Foucault, 1995). In contrast, the clothed body has become normalised under arbitrary criteria.

At what cost protection or privacy?

Kaimai Kindergarten teachers suggested that the key to their Japanese counterparts’ comfort with the body may lie in Asian bathing and toileting practices. The way the body is regulated during this act reflects the parameters of the disciplinary society (Foucault, 1981, 1995). In both New Zealand and Japan, washing and toileting routines in early childhood settings mirror the systems of the dominant cultural group, which dictate the ‘correct’ manner in which to deal with such necessary bodily functions (Elias, 2000; Foucault, 1973). In contemporary Japanese society, technological and economic developments mean that most households now have a bathroom of their own but the culture of public bathing remains strong (Clark, 1994). In New Zealand, bathing is usually an individual affair.

However, in the interests of safety, New Zealand children’s bodies have paradoxically become more exposed. Following policy changes to increase visibility in New Zealand early childhood settings, many toilet spaces have become more open by removing doors or installing mirrors. At Kaimai Kindergarten, each toilet was divided by a partition but open at the front which meant anyone washing their hands at the sink or passing by the area could see children urinating or defecating. This was in contrast to Oka Kindergarten in Japan where the toilets all had locking doors. Ironically, this means that New Zealand children are in many ways far more exposed than Japanese children while carrying out toileting rituals. Under the rubric of child protection and safety, New Zealand children have become the subject of ‘permanent visibility’ concealed within the apparatus of supervision and building structures (Foucault, 1995: 201).

While greater surveillance has become a feature of ablution routines in New Zealand, the opposite has occurred in Japan with toileting having become a private matter in contrast to the past when open, communal toilet spaces were a feature of early childhood settings. Tobin et al. (2009) view these newly partitioned public toilets as a symbol of modernity expressed through modified concepts of privacy, space, modesty and the body. Changing notions of privacy can be seen as an attempt to regulate behaviour within a disciplinary society (Elias, 2000; Foucault, 1981, 1995). Despite these rising levels of privacy however, there remains in Japanese early childhood settings a level of comfort with the body not replicated in New Zealand centres (Tobin et al., 2009).

Regulating touch in the early childhood context

Tobin et al. (2009) suggest that Japanese early childhood settings are profoundly embodied sites where staff and children are comfortable with high levels of intimacy, touch, dirt and scatological jokes pertaining to the body. Yet, the issue of touch remains problematic in a New Zealand context. Farquhar (2001) argues that, in the New Zealand early childhood setting, any form of touch can potentially be seen as abusive regardless of a child’s needs. Regrettably for many of the teachers interviewed for this study, the subjugation of touch in their centres has become an example of the ‘progressive individualization’ of the body and the self—‘the walls constructed between our bodies and those of others’ (Leavitt and Power, 1997: 65).

However, within the cultural discourse of skinship (Matsuda, 1973; Tahhan, 2014), touch in a Japanese early childhood centre is not only seen as desirable but necessary for a child’s development. The close body-to-body contact, the transfer of body heat and the intimate nature of caresses exchanged between teacher and child is called soine (Ben-Ari, 1997). This term refers to the Chinese kanji for river which depicts three lines representing two parents lying either side of a child. Within the early childhood context examples of this kind of ‘embodied knowledge’ (Bresler, 2004: 127) or ‘embodied experience’ (Abu-Lughod and Lutz, 1990: 12) can be seen in the overnight sleepover (otomarikai) and naptime (ohirune).

Embodied experiences

The sleepover (otomarikai) is an eagerly awaited event for the oldest children (nen chō san) at Oka Kindergarten. It usually takes place on a Friday afternoon, when the younger children have left for the day. Following time for play and games, the teachers and children cooperate together to prepare the evening meal. In contrast to New Zealand policies relating to overnight stays for school students, a ratio of parents are not required to either attend or assist during the event. After dinner and free play-time, preparations begin for the communal sleeping arrangements. Teachers and children work together to spread their bedding in the centre of the hall before lying down, chatting, and gradually drifting off to sleep.

While there is no naptime (ohirune) at the kindergarten, it is common for all children to have a sleep after lunch at childcare centres. Even the youngest children learn how to prepare their sleeping mats (futons) in the classroom. After the children have changed into their pyjamas and laid down, teachers move quietly among them, stopping to stroke and pat those who remain restless. It is common to see teachers lying down between the children’s small bodies, gently patting their backs and softly humming a lullaby. Sometimes teachers also take the chance to enjoy a short nap which helps children to feel safe and relaxed as well as providing staff with a much-needed respite.

Ben-Ari (1997) argues that the accumulated spells of co-sleeping with one’s peer group as a child leads to the adult Japanese embodying ‘the experience of grouping in an intimate manner’ (p. 51). This shared physical experience helps children to internalise the distinctions between the family and the outside world. Naptime is one way by which the warmth and familiarity of the family dyad is transferred to the wider peer group. Practices such as naptime function to instil particular traits and qualities connected with ‘being Japanese’.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed the ways in which children’s bodies are regulated according to cultural constructs in the early childhood context. In Western contexts, the child’s body has become a site for anxiety and fear in the face of rising debate over appropriate policy and practice. This construction is reflected in the New Zealand early childhood setting, where children’s bodies are increasingly subject to surveillance and regulation (Foucault, 1995). As Tobin (1997) writes,

the pervert lurking in the cracks and on the fringes of the world of early childhood education is a spectre that haunts our thinking and practice, distorting the way we see ourselves and each other and the decisions we make about practice. (p. 143)

A group of naked children outside on a hot summer’s day after water play looked to be an innocent, even beautiful, scene to the majority of Japanese viewers. During many of the focus groups, these images on the screen created links to a nostalgic, remembered or (re)imagined past (Robertson, 1988). However, concepts of privacy combined with changing notions of child safety have become a reality especially in urban centres. Japanese teachers are increasingly aware of both the possibility of external threats to children’s bodies and the need to balance traditional pedagogies with the anxieties of modern mothers.

For New Zealand teachers, the ‘pervert lurking in the cracks’ is an omnipresent phantom which prevents the kind of sensory and physical interactions between teacher and child that were common in early childhood settings 20 or 30 years earlier. Under the rubric of greater visibility and safety, the bodies of children have become more exposed through measures such as removing doors and installing mirrors. Sexuality, through its overt repression, becomes a more salient part of embodied interactions. The teachers recreate these powerful dominant cultural discourses through their actions and language (Foucault, 1980).

For teachers working within the Japanese early childhood setting, looking at the physical form neither implicates nor condemns. Viewed through a Japanese lens, children’s bodies can be seen as gateways to a nostalgic, remembered, or re-created past. Sexuality is not explicitly linked to the child’s body, which instead represents a form of purity, innocence, and beauty (Chen, 1996). However, there is a cultural shift occurring within these arenas. While furusato ideology may support the nostalgic notion that a child can run free and unclothed without fear of prying eyes or danger this attitude is being challenged in the light of rising awareness of child abuse issues (Goodman, 2002; Leheny, 2009), violent attacks (Sukemune, 2004) and changing notions of privacy (Guichard-Anguis, 2009).

From birth, the bodies of children are subject to the regulation and civilising controls of adults (Elias, 2000). Foucault (1995) has focussed on the body as a site of discipline, exposing the civilising power of modern institutions such as prisons, hospitals, and schools. The body is rendered docile through the micro-physics of bio-power and the normalisation of rational control. Through a process of assessment, coordination and ultimately, surveillance, emerges the ‘disciplinary individual’ who has been created by these techniques of power (Foucault, 1995: 227). While Japanese early childhood education is often regarded by outsiders as overly regulated, we suggest that there remains a freedom of the corporeal that is slowly disappearing in Western contexts such as New Zealand. Japanese children’s bodies may be subject to routine and management, but there remains a space for touch and for shared, embodied, experiences.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Rachael Burke’s fieldwork and research for this article was supported by a Massey University Doctoral Scholarship.

Notes

Author biographies

Rachael S Burke is currently a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Post-Doctoral Research Fellow based in Hiroshima, Japan. As part of her fellowship, she is conducting research into multi-racial children’s (hafu) and families’ experiences of Japanese early childhood education (ECE). Rachael graduated with a PhD in social anthropology from Massey University, New Zealand, in 2013. Her doctoral study examined implicit cultural practice in early childhood education in New Zealand and Japan, with ‘the body’ as a central focus. In 2015, Routledge published her doctoral thesis as a monograph, Bodies as Sites of Cultural Reflection in Early Childhood Education, co-authored with Judith Duncan. Her research interests include the cross-cultural study of early childhood education, visual anthropology and comparative education.

Judith Duncan worked for many years as an academic at Otago University and the Children’s Issues Centre in Dunedin. She then held the position of Professor at Canterbury University where she continued to contribute to ECE policy, practice and research until her death in March 2015. Judith’s research was based on postmodern and socio-cultural theories and used a range of qualitative and narrative analysis tools. In recent years, her work had explored children’s learning dispositions, ECE centre support for families, as well as kindergarten history and cultural assumptions in New Zealand. Her most recent book, Bodies as sites of cultural reflection (2015), was a collaboration with Rachael S. Burke. Two weeks after her death, at Judith’s memorial celebration, Prof. Atsushi Nanakida, from Hiroshima University presented a copy of their jointly edited book published in Japanese, Early childhood education and care in New Zealand and Japan (2015).

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