ABSTRACT
This chapter examines texts and activities in which children at Nakamachi and Morikawa engaged during their study of kokugo (Japanese language and literature).1 Kokugo is a key subject when considering discourses about self and practices of personal formation in Japan’s primary schools, both because of the curriculum time it commands, and because of the significance of its content. Language and literacy are central to the Japanese primary curriculum, as in most countries, and kokugo takes up more hours than any other subject. Between 1992 and 2002 the curriculum in effect set 210 hours for sixth year kokugo – 20 per cent of the 1,015 hours allocated for the entire sixth year curriculum (Monbusho¯, 1989: 158).2 Moreover, ideas about self and personal identity were often central to sixth year kokugo texts. In the texts used at Nakamachi and Morikawa, the predominating discourses were ones that represented individuals and their identities as intrinsically linked to the larger worlds – social and natural – of which they were a part.
