Cette thèse porte sur la socialisation de genre des élèves scolarisés dans les écoles élémentaires japonaises dans les années 2010 : elle montre l’existence de situations et d’expériences de socialisation différenciée entre les filles et les garçons.L’objectif de ce travail est de détailler comment l’acquisition et l’apprentissage de certaines normes genrées se déroule pendant le quotidien des élèves, un processus souvent évoqué mais rarement détaillé dans les travaux portant sur ce sujet. Dans ce but, trois méthodes complémentaires sont utilisées : une enquête ethnographique, des entretiens semi-directifs et des dispositifs d’enquêtes spécifiques pour évoquer avec les enfants les questions de genre.Retranscrire la parole des enfants permet d’avoir accès à leur représentation de la différence entre les deux sexes. Acteurs de leur propre socialisation, les enfants élaborent le masculin et le féminin, notamment à travers le langage, l’apparence, les activités, les jeux, la mise en scène des corps, l’expression du sentiment amoureux et de la sexualité. Même si le cadre scolaire contribue à organiser la séparation des sexes et à normaliser les rôles sociaux sexués, les enfants organisent les rapports de genre en effectuant une relecture des modèles que proposent l’école et les autres instances socialisatrices. Les groupes de pairs jouent ainsi un rôle important dans ce processus complexe de socialisation.Ce travail, circonscrit aux études japonaises, se situe au croisement des études de genre et de la socio-anthropologie de l’enfance. / This research is about gender socialization of children going to Japanese primary schools in the 2010s: it shows the evidence of experiences taking place during differentiated socialization of girls and boys.The purpose of this study is to specify how pupils are acquiring and learning gender norms during their daily life, knowing that those processes are often raised but hardly described in related research works. To achieve this, three complementary methods were set: an ethnographic study, semi-directive interviews and special investigation schemes in order to discuss about gender issues with children.To write down children’s own words is a way to access their representation of sex differences. While being social actors of their own socialization, children are constructing masculinity and femininity, through language, external look, activities, plays, body staging, sexuality and feelings of love expression. Even if the school system organizes sex segregation and normalizes gender roles, children are negotiating those gender relations while performing in their own way the models that school and other social structures offer. Peer groups are also playing a significant role into these complex socialization processes.This thesis in Japanese studies is based on both gender studies and childhood studies.

This study focuses on three young women in their final year of school using data gathered during a year-long process of individual conversational interviews, the contents of which were largely determined by their interests. Three themes arise from critical incidents during this year - the debutante ball, teenage pregnancy and dieting. These themes are used to focus wide ranging explorations of what it is to be a young woman at this particular time. The broader cultural production of discursive positions available to, and developed by, these young women as part of their identity formation is discussed. Methodological issues concerning power relationships between research participants are also the focus of critical attention. It is considered that young women's bodies and bodily practices are central to understanding the processes involved in their identity formation. It is in this context that the focus turns to bodies that matter. In contemporary Western cultures 'adolescent bodies' could be said to matter 'too much' in the sense that they are increasingly the focus for disciplinary practices in institutions such as schooling, the church, the family, health care, health promotion and the media. This disciplining is legitimised because adolescence is socially constructed as a 'becoming'. In this case it is a matter of 'becoming woman'; a sort of apprenticeship which allows for knowledgeable others to provide not only guidance and nurturance, but discipline. Using insights gained from feminist poststructuralist theory and cultural feminism this thesis argues that the discourses and practices generated within and across institutions, which are normalised by their institutional base, are gender differentiated. The focus is on young women's embodied subjectivity and how the discourses and practices they engage with and in work to construct an ideal feminine body-subject. The discursive production of a gendered identity has a considerable impact on young women's health and their health-related behaviours. This is explored specifically in the thesis in relation to sexuality and the cultural production of the 'ideal' female body. It is argued that health education and health promotion strategies which are designed to influence young women's health related behaviours, need to consider the forms of power, knowledge and desire produced through young women's active engagement with institutionalised discourses of identity if they are to have an ongoing impact