덧그리지 않는 ‘젠더’는 가능한가?－제2차 고등학교 日本語讀本 上‧下부터 제4차 교육과정까지 고등학교 日本語 上‧下를 중심으로－

Abstract

This study aims to contemplate the possibility of a new ‘Gender’ by extracting and decoding the logic of gender dichotomy inherent in the Japanese textbooks by analyzing the 2nd Curriculum “Japanese language textbooks 1‧2” and the 4th Curriculum “High School Japanese 1‧2”. First, ‘unequal gender norms’ ‘overplays’ the role of women, while ‘underplaying’ the role of men in the family. Second, ‘heterogeneous gender norms’ give rise to male narratives that are based on the formula of ‘male domain=outside the house=office workers,’ while also producing female narratives based on the formula of ‘female domain =inside the house=full-time housewives.’ Third, this study contemplated ‘unfair gender norms’ which always position men as the principal agent while otherizing women. This is because cultural inequality emphasizing cultural differences between men and women leads to social inequality among genders. In most textbooks, first-person subjects are men and the sentences, dialogues, illustrations, and photographs imply that the male represents humans, students, teachers, and Koreans. Only men are featured as office workers, teachers, experts, and as having professions with high social status or ranks. On the other hand, mothers are omitted when introducing family members or from job description. Fourth, this paper explores the possibility of a new ‘gender-free.’ A few textbooks describe housework as a task supposed to be shared equally by men and women, and suggest the possibility of degenderization by portraying women as mobile agents, thus opening up the possibility of post-space. Last but not least, Particularly, several Japanese textbooks are found to present degendered images that make for a non-binary perspective on gender.