ABSTRACT
While research on the body in education has been undertaken for a long time, there still remain new issues to be explored. In contrast to the focus on the mind and soul, the theme of the body, which does not easily fit into the framework of discussions about knowledge acquisition or the establishment of autonomy, has always been placed at the margins of educational studies. However, as long as education is an activity that occurs in the relationship between humans, and between humans and the environment, the body is always involved in some way. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the dualism of mind and body, and the dominance of the mind. From this perspective, firstly, the mastery of customary behaviours and the formation of habitus should be analysed in terms of the bodily cultivation of living in a certain social group. It involves cultivation that is based on the senses. It is also about Legitimate Peripheral Participation, which is a social mastery that activates imitation by emplacing the body within relational processes. Examples of research on the mechanisms that support the above are studies on ‘waza’ (わざ). In addition, thoughts on the living body shed light on the body as a subject that makes sense of the world as it lives. Secondly, in the context of the critique of modern education, it is impossible to ignore Foucault’s construct of ‘disciplining via the gaze’ in his book Discipline and Punish. This is because the book goes on to describe the way in which the power that is essentially educational is directed towards the human body. However, this power does not appear as a repressive action that restricts human action, but as a productive one that enables human behaviour. It is necessary to look not at the control of the body by the mind, but at the emergence of power that acts on the body and makes action possible.
