Abstract
Technology tends to be regarded as a domain of innovation and invention that is forward-looking and focused on the future. The chapter draws on ethnographic and archival research in Japan to show that advanced technology, in particular robotics, and progressive values should not be conflated. The two are not automatically congruent. Idioms of family and kinship have been deployed to imbue Japanese technologies (or engineered artefacts) with uniquely Japanese character, and even to frame them as nostalgic by-products of Japanese uniqueness. Yet Japan is also regarded as the go-to site for futuristic discourses, images, and forecasts of human-robot relations. These images are actually outdated and the forecasts backward-looking. Japan serves as a case study of ‘imagineerism’, a mode of political framing that structures the imagined uses of technology, including the technology of kinship, as a declinist narrative. Imagineerism underscores the consequences of techno-nationalism; that is, imagining a robotised society of the future involves the reimagining of past society as an ideal to resurrect.
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Notes
- 1.
Other especially useful national culture-focused ‘case studies’ of techno-nationalism that complement my analysis include Maurice Charland’s (1986) study of Canadian railways and telecommunications, and S. Waqar H. Zaidi’s (2008) interrogation of the conservative vision of British engineer-ideologues.
- 2.
‘Families we choose’ is not to be confused with ‘fictive kin’ which refers to people labelled by kinship terms (uncle, aunt, brother, sister) who are not related by biology or marriage.
- 3.
I extend Nissani’s thesis and posit that these strongly held beliefs include both longstanding rituals, cultural practices, and customs, and the decisive rebuttals/refutations discrediting them; that is, these beliefs and their refutations simultaneously exist in a dialectic as if they were mutually constitutive.
- 4.
Imagineer(ing) is most often associated with the Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development, Inc.
- 5.
The kindling of nostalgia for a seemingly less complicated and simpler period has been stimulated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns and travel restrictions (Shoji 2020).
- 6.
The nation state and corporations have been characterised as types of extended families, paternalistic in design. In 2011 there were 81,000 adult adoptions that were transacted to secure the continuity of the same number of households (and the corporations associated with them). Most were adopted sons-in-law, who assumed the surname of their fathers-in-law (Mehrotra et al. 2013).
- 7.
A very recent article in the English-language Asahi Shimbun reports that an online survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in December 2019 but only released in October 2020, found that about 50 per cent of adults ‘do nothing to help out their neighbors or acquaintances’ (Yamamoto 2020).
- 8.
Japanese roboticists themselves have written books aimed at the general public that celebrate human-robot coexistence. Masahiro Mori’s The Buddha in the Robot (2005 [1981]) was first published in Japanese under a different title in 1974. Between 2002 and 2007, roboticists at Waseda University published a seven-volume series of artsy cartoon-illustrated pamphlets that introduced readers to a future where human lives would be enhanced by ‘helpful robots’ (Waseda Daigaku Wabotto Hausu Kenkyūjo 2002–2007). Other relevant books are noted in this chapter.
- 9.
These sectors are agriculture, aviation construction*, fisheries, food service industry, industrial machinery manufacturing, nursing care, automobile maintenance, building cleaning, electric and electronic information, food and beverage processing, lodging, material processing, and shipbuilding and ship-related sectors*. * indicates sectors approved for the second group (Milly 2020, p. 3).
- 10.
Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) was created by Osamu Tezuka in 1951, and Doraemon, which ran as a cartoon from 1969–1996, was created by Fujiko Fujio, the joint pen name of two cartoonists, Hiroshi Fujimoto (1933–1996) and Motoo Abiko (b.1934).
- 11.
Asimov’s three laws were first elaborated in his 1942 short story, ‘Runaround’; a fourth law, the zeroth law, was created much later in his novel, Robots and Empire (1985). The ‘zeroeth’ law continues the pattern where lower-numbered laws supersede the higher-numbered laws. (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws; (4/0.) A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Tezuka’s more sociological, family-based laws are: (1) Robots must serve humankind; (2) Robots shall never kill or injure humans; (3) Robots shall call the human who creates them ‘father’; (4) Robots can make anything, except money; (5) Robots shall never go abroad without permission; (6) Male and female robots shall never switch [gender] roles; (7) Robots shall never change their appearance or assume another identity without permission; (8) Robots created as adults shall never act as children; (9) Robots shall not assemble other robots that have been discarded by humans; (10) Robots shall never damage human homes or tools.
- 12.
Their laws have influenced the field of robot ethics although several roboticists in Europe, Japan, and the United States have proposed alternatives that address developments in AI and tangible robots (e.g. Murphy and Woods 2009).
- 13.
For reasons not provided, the Sen.se website was taken down over the past year. Information on ‘Mother’ sales is not available. Most reviews of the robot date to 2014 when she debuted. What is important in the context of this essay is that SoftBank perceived that the Euro-American market would welcome household/family robots (see also Robertson 2018b, pp. 135–136).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Abe’s book, a best seller, was published in 2006 and previewed Innovation 25. Utsukushii kuni e (Towards a Beautiful Country) bore the subtitle, Jishin to hokori no moteru Nippon e (Towards a Japan that possesses confidence and pride).
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Acknowledgements
Heartfelt thanks to Cathrine Hasse and Maja Hojer Bruun for inviting me to contribute a chapter on technology and kinship to this handbook. Thank you too to Celeste Brusati and Snait Gissis for commenting on an earlier draft. All translations from Japanese to English are my own unless otherwise indicated.
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Robertson, J. (2022). Imagineerism: Technology, Robots, Kinship. Perspectives from Japan. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_23
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