'Nemureru ko wo okosu mono dearu': Learning about Sex at a Top Ranking Japanese Senior High School.

In order to propose an educational intervention for sexuality education courses at a Japanese senior high school, we interviewed 51, 15-18-year-old, male Japanese senior high school students, and 4 teachers who impart sex education in the school. Moreover, we analysed the 'master narrative' produced by the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) to regulate the sexual behaviour of young people through the contents of purity and sex education. A close examination of Monbusho's master narrative revealed that the 'Nemureru ko wo okosu mono dearu' (literally means an issue that wakes up sleeping children. A close expression in English is 'let sleeping dogs lie') is still the tenet of sex education at school. We present the ways our sample regards teaching sex in relation to their sexual cultures and their needs for information about sexuality. Our interviews show the ways in which our informants create their own sexual cultures by incorporating, discarding or frankly rejecting notions of sex, contraception and risk that are included in sex education at school, in pornography and in talking with peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]