E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 9, 2024

Touch and Force: On the Ambivalence of Touching as a Possible
Theme in the Philosophy of Education
Jun YAMANAThe University of Tokyo
Abstract
The impacts of COVID19 have led to major changes in the social lives of people on a global scale inthe years since 2020. This has provided an opportunity to rethink the fundamental issues of various
social activities. Education is one such activity. During the pandemic, human contact was severely
restricted to prevent infection. Education has traditionally been seen as inherently based on the premiseof “touching,” both literally and figuratively. One of the questions that arose in the era of “social
distancing” was what touching means for education. In this essay, I draw on the theories of asylum
and the sacred to focus on the view that touching has an ambivalence that gives rise to both the power
to protect and the power to exclude. According to such a view, the pandemic may have endangered
the protected status of individuals and at the same time made it possible for us to distance ourselvesfrom the forces of exclusion. This essay explores the implications of such a hypothesis for the field of
education.
Key words: force, touching, asylum, power, violence, human transformation

The Emerging Issue of “Touching”
What would happen if the element of “touch” were removed from human lives?
Due to the outbreak of COVID19, we have inevitably become involved in such an“experiment” on a global scale. Avoidance of direct touching has been universally
recommended, and “social distancing” has become the catchphrase of our time. Thisso-called ‘new lifestyle’1 has impacted all cultural spheres, including that of education.
1

The “new lifestyle” is an action guideline published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to preventthe spread of novel coronavirus infection. In layman's terms, it refers to a lifestyle that incorporates measures

Correspondence:
Jun YAMANA, The University of Tokyo. Email: jyamana6s@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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In its 122nd number (November 2020), the editorial board of Studies in the
Philosophy of Education (『教育哲学研究』), in the Journal of the Philosophy of
Education Society of Japan (PESJ), announced a special issue on “Fureru (Touch) and
the Philosophy of Education”, and called for submissions (SPE 2020: 119). In the end, a
total of nine essays were published in a special issue, the 124th number of the journal,2indicating the importance of this theme for contemporary educational philosophers.
As the Editor-in-Chief at that time, I was responsible for this initiative. In soliciting
papers for the special issue, the editorial committee envisioned several specific topics; forexample, attachment and physical contact, the significance of touching in schooling, thepossibility of education being paradoxically enhanced by non-touching situations, andthe problem of the binary thinking that makes a hard distinction between “online” and“offline” (i.e., in-person) contact. As it turned out, however, the contributed articles dealt
with a wider variety of topics, and considered the relation between a broader range ofphilosophical perspectives on “touching”, than the editorial board had expected. In my
own case, the keyword “touching” prompted consideration of the relationship between
touch and force. The philosophy of “touch” turns out to be dizzyingly complex; and in
this brief paper, I will explore the reasons for this complexity.

Power and Asylum for Protection through Touching
The relationship between touching and power is also of profound significance toeducation, especially through its connection to the element of protection in the concept
of asylum. The term “asylum” (Asyl in German, asile in French) derives from the Greek
asylos, meaning “inviolable,” which in turn suggests “shelter” or “refuge.” Themonograph Formen des Asylrechts und ihre Verbreitung bei den Germanen (Forms of
the Right of Asylum and Their Connection with the Germanic Peoples) (1954), by
Ortwin Henssler (1923- 2017), which focuses on the history of legal systems, describes
the evolution of asylum law.3 The theoretical potential of his thought has been more
appreciated, accepted, and developed in Japan, mainly in the context of historiography,
than in his native Germany (see Yamana 2021 for an overview of the process of
acceptance of his theory).
against novel coronavirus infection in daily life.
The call for papers for the special issue is in Japanese; however, the special issue includes a table of contents andabstracts of the essays in English at its end (SPE 124 2021: 276-284 and back cover of the journal).
3
The following summary of Henssler’s asylum theory is based on my previous paper (Yamana 2021).
2

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Henssler’s account of the essential logic of asylum is the most important feature of
the monograph for our purposes. In his view, in the primitive “sacred-magical stage,”the “constant crisis of survival” (Henssler 1954: 23) - the human struggle with otherhumans, animals, nature, and even ghosts - is a prerequisite for the emergence of placeof asylum. Such a critical state triggers the fundamental emotions of “fear and anxiety”(ibid 14) and “the search for a protective principle” (ibid 15). One becomes an object ofmagical awe when he or she is in touch with an “orenda” (sacred power).4 Thus, “inorder not to disturb the harmony with the transcendent, the community must refrainfrom any further action against such an orendized person, at least as long as theorendization continues” (ibid 18 f.). This is the source of the power to create a space andtime of protection.
In Henssler’s view, the thesis that the sacred touch exerts a protective effect is itself
a finding of religious anthropology; the importance of Henssler's approach lies in his
historical and systematic thesis regarding the evolution of asylum culture from thereligious phase to the phase of secularization and modernization. On the basis of hisanalysis of the example of asylum law, he proposes a historical-stage theory of asylum,arguing that asylum culture is still present, in an evolved form.
In Japan, Henssler's theory of asylum attracted especial attention from the late 1970s
to the 1990s. The Japanese historian Kinya Abe (1979), for example, examined
Henssler’s theory more closely from a historical perspective, and discussed the German
medieval culture of asylum; while another Japanese historian, Yoshihiko Amino (1978),using Henssler's thesis as a theoretical foundation, argued that asylum culture also existed
in Japan. He notes that Japanese temples were referred to as muen-jo (無縁所) , places
where one can be in touch with the gods; and at the same time, spaces severed from thedomain of secular power, which may thus also serve as places of escape. Amino notes
that, in Japan, the “unattached culture (無縁文化)” symbolized by temples “has taken
extremely diverse forms and permeates every area of people's lives in minute detail”(Amino 1978: 255).
Inspired by Abe's and Amino's studies, sociology and other fields in Japan havealso discussed asylum culture in the modern era, but the theory of asylum has neverbeen fully accepted in the field of educational sciences, including the philosophy ofeducation. However, given the fundamental vulnerability of children and their need for

4

Henssler calls the sacred power, “orendism,” recalling the Iroquois belief in the existence of strong, tangible andintangible forces and spirits (Henssler 1954: 16).

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protection, the possibility of asylum being created through touching offers a suggestive
locus for discussion of protective space for children.5

Forced Exclusion through Touching
It is a curious fact of cultural history that the sacred touch can also be a source of
impurity, and thus an occasion for prompting forced exclusion. French thinkers such as
Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois drew attention to this point, which Henssler rarely
emphasized. They talked about the issue philosophically. Caillois, for example, writes in
his book, L'homme et le sacré (Man and the Sacred) (1939), “Even in the most advanced
civilizations, a certain word very often means both ‘impurity’ and ‘holiness’. The Greek
word asylos also means ‘impurity’ and ‘the sacrifice to remove it” (Caillois 1994: 47).
The exclusion from the community of a person who has come in touch with theoverwhelming force of the sacred, and the protection of that person, are here regarded as
inseparable. As aforementioned, the Greek word asylos, which means purifying sacrifice
as well as impurity, is also the root of the word “asylum”.
Caillois draws attention to those, such as the clergy, who can transform impurity into
“blessing,” exercising a cleansing force (ibid 62). The modern state system has sought toexpunge the force of the sacred, with its mixture of the pure and the impure, and hasquestioned, even to the point of undermining, the authority of religion. Returning toHenssler's argument, focusing on legal history, he advances the thesis that the area ofasylum generated by the sacred has shrunk in the modern era. “The state, he writes,monopolizes all coercive power and law” (Henssler 1954: 37), and “increasing
differentiation of the individual areas of life takes place.” The events of life, once
governed by religion, are subjugated to a more rational order in modern times, and theasylum laws become not only “superfluous, but hostile to the legal system” (ibid 37).
This is because, in the increasingly complex legal system, “asylum granted neverthelessbrings uncertainty and arbitrariness into the organizing principle of law” (ibid 37). In thisera, “the right of asylum loses its function and sinks to form without content” (ibid 38).
Nonetheless, every culture needs a time and space of protection - both from the5

The pedagogical objects of consideration as potential spaces of asylum could be established in a variety of ways.
As examples, we may think of the “child-centered” spaces in the new education movement at the beginning of the20th century, or the institutions that rescue children from abuse or bullying in the modern era. Alternatively, schools
themselves can be interpreted as a kind of asylum for children. See Yamana 2015 and 2021 for discussion of
education and space from the viewpoint of asylum theory.

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standpoint of vulnerable individuals and from the communal standpoint for the
maintenance of collective order. Nowadays, the clergy and religious organizations
generating asylum have largely been replaced by modern institutions such as nation states.
The mixed energies of protective and exclusionary forces are divided into two types. One
is the power that governs the community, and the other is the violence that threatens the“security” of the community. However, the power of modern institutions, which aresupposed to provide protection, can itself be violent, stigmatizing as “heretics” those who
threaten the institutions, and marginalizing or excluding them from the community.
Walter Benjamin's essay, Zur Kiritik der Gewalt (1920/21), emphasizes this point. Gewalt
is a German concept that can originally mean both “power” and “violence” (Waldenfels
1990). The young Benjamin argues for a distinction between power through humaninstitutions (“die mytische Gewalt”) and power beyond them (“die göttliche Gewalt”);
and attempts to justify revolutions by placing them in the latter category. The creaking of
the modern system, dividing inherently ambivalent forces into two, seems to be alluded
to his theory. What is power? What is violence? The answer ultimately depends on thestandpoint of the individual who experiences the force.
I might summarize the essential lineaments of my approach here in the following
manner. According to the asylum theory, the force generated by the sacred touch cancreate a space-time of protection. However, that same force can also evoke the violenceof exclusion, based on the notion of sacrificial purification. The modern system tries toavoid such complications and ambiguities inherent in such force. However, the system isitself caught up in the ambiguity of the force in other ways. How, then, can we best
approach the question of human transformation and education with respect to therelationship between touch and force outlined above?

Dealing with Force and Human Transformation
Japanese researchers on asylums often allude to a prototypical children's gamecalled engacho, based on an old folk custom, a form of play that is unusually suggestive
to anyone interested in human transformation. The “play” starts suddenly. Children
abruptly begin teasing one child, saying “engacho”. The child is considered to be “impure”
and becomes untouchable by the other children. In order to be cleansed of the impurity,
he/she needs to touch someone, and thus the child chases after other children who arerunning away to escape from his/her touching. There is, however, a spell which can breakthe cycle of the impurity transfer. If you make a circle with your thumb and forefinger,
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and ask someone to cut the circle with their hand, the child will no longer be affected by
the impurity. According to Amino, the en in engacho means “impurity (穢)”, but can alsosignify “connection (縁)”; cho signifies “cutting” (Amino 1978: 13).
There are two elements of touch at work in this play: one that transfers the impurity,and the other that halts its spread. In light of our discussion above, the engacho game can,I think, be understood as a kind of lesson in dealing with the complex relationshipbetween touch and force, already in childhood. Of course, this play is not without its
problems, at least from the perspective of modern society; for example, the play may turninto bullying, and we can imagine a case in which the child who intervenes to save a childfrom a bullying situation can themselves become the next target. Through touching, theforces of exclusion and protection can alternate in complex ways, as the sacrificial
cleansing viewpoint on bullying suggests (Sugano 1997). Bataille and Caillois'
understanding of the violence of exclusion has evolved into the ritual theory, which alsointerprets such force positively, as an aspect of the death and rebirth of a community.
However, when the focus is on the excluded, especially when children are assumed to be
the object of exclusion, such force may be decidedly negative in nature.
In order to spare children such complexities of force, the Act for the Promotion of
Measures to Prevent Bullying (2013) was enacted in Japan, according to which a “school
bullying task force” should be established within a given school when bullying occurs,
and the school board is required to intervene more proactively. In light of the seriousnessof the problems surrounding bullying, the establishment of such a law is certainly to becommended as an improvement in society’s response. However, given the problem of
the complexities of force that persists in the modern state, are we right in viewing suchinstitutional measures as sufficient to address the many difficulties presented by bullying?
Moreover, the problematic relationship between touch and force extends well beyond
bullying behavior. The complexities of force at work in such cases lie buried also in thedepths of education, as modern anxieties regarding the growth of children and youth.
At the beginning of this paper, I noted that we have been forced by the pandemic toparticipate in a grand experiment in non-touching. Of course, this is an unfavorable
situation; however, I sometimes wonder if it might actually conceal an opportunity for a
temporary escape from the complicated influence of the forces associated with touching.
I may be the only one who feels this way. What about children and students? I wonder if,
when the world of touching is restored, some of them will feel uncomfortable with thisinfluence, which had been accepted as “normal” before the pandemic. Has the Internet
space become their new asylum? Or might it be the case that even in the online world,
where there is no direct touching at the physical level, a shadow of the problematics ofSpecial Essay

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force may persist, in the metaphorical role of digital “touching”? It is far from easy tocome to terms with the ambiguous yet compelling forces associated with touching; andthis is a major reason why, as I said at the outset, the philosophy of touch is dizzyingly
complex.

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Acknowledgement
This essay was prompted by an invitation to the 2022 Annual Conference of KPES
“A Pedagogy of ‘Touching’ in the Viral Era: Rethinking Teaching and Learning” on
November 25-26, 2022 at the Korean National University. Although I presented on adifferent topic at the conference, the invitation gave me the impetus to write this essay. I
would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone involved in the conference,
especially Professor Duck-Joo Kwak (Korean National University), who was in chargeof the conference.

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