The Android and the Fax: Robots, AI and Buddhism in Japan

In March 2019, a temple in Kyoto, Kōdaiji, unveiled to the public ‘Mindar’, a robot developed in collaboration with Ishiguro Hiroshi, a well-known robotics professor at Osaka University. The android is presented as the manifestation of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. It can move, speak, and record what it sees. Mindar delivers sermons based on the Heart Sutra and, according to the temple’s priest, it will keep evolving and its knowledge will become endless. Mindar has received mixed responses from visitors, from those who cry during the sermons to those who feel it inappropriate for a robot to preach in a temple. Media coverage has mainly focused on the potential for Mindar to change the image of Buddhism in Japan, a tradition often portrayed as antiquated and mainly focused on funerary rituals. By examining the declarations of Mindar’s creators and varied responses of its visitors, and drawing on observation of Mindar’s practice, this chapter explores the interaction between AI, robotics, and Buddhism in contemporary Japan. It highlights the affective potentialities and possibilities of AI, in particular as they relate to emotional connections between humans and robots, and the implications for Buddhism in contemporary Japan.

Archaeology of the Kerma Culture

Kerma was a Bronze Age culture (c. 2500–1500 bce) located in what is today Sudan and southern Egypt. It is one of the earliest complex societies in Africa and, at its height, rivaled Ancient Egypt. The ancient Kerma culture spans the Pre-Kerma, examining the settlements and cemeteries of this ancient culture during the Pre-Kerma (3500–2500 bce, included here as a precursor to the Kerma civilization), Early Kerma, Middle Kerma, Classic Kerma, and Recent Kerma periods. Much of what is known comes from the capital city and type site, Kerma. However, other urban centers such as Sai, as well as hinterland communities, are also discussed. An archaeological approach is crucial to the examination of Kerma’s past because an indigenous writing system had not yet been developed. Interaction with Egypt is discussed, but only as it relates to Kerma’s historical context. Chronological changes to craft production, religious practices, domestic spaces, and funerary rituals are framed by larger sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues, including inequality, political authority, and economic development.

Enclosures of Death in the Early Iron Age

This article focuses on the study of the Early Iron Age necropolis of Esfola, taking into account the burial rituals of the site (the architecture, the funerary objects and the human skeletal analyses are dealt with in the context of ‘burial ritual’ studies). This research will contribute to the body of knowledge on Early Iron Age necropolises with enclosures, typical of the Beja and Ourique regions in southern Portugal, i.e. Vinha das Caliças 4, Monte do Bolor 1–2, Cinco Réis 8, Carlota and Palhais. All these sites identified in the southern Iberian Peninsula allow us to characterize the funerary rituals practised in this region during the Early Iron Age.

The Eastern Cemetery of Kerma

The Eastern Cemetery of Kerma is located south of the Third Cataract, close to the ancient city that was likely the center of the Kingdom of Kerma. It extends over 70 hectares and contains about 40,000 graves. Its development from north to south covers the whole duration of the Kerma civilization (2500–1500 bce) and gives a general idea of the richness of funerary rituals and of the process of social stratification. At its beginning, the graves, small with few objects, express a relative equality of treatment in the face of death. Stratification is first perceptible during the Kerma Ancien II phase (2300–2100 bce) with larger graves of archers containing more objects, sacrificed animals, and sometimes accompanying people buried next to the main burial. A few decades later appear the first large tumuli of 20 m in diameter, which contain the graves of the rulers. During the next period which starts about 2050 bce (Kerma Moyen), the development of the cemetery is spectacular, with the multiplication of great tumuli following its central ridge. This trend culminates during the Kerma Classique (1750–1500 bce) with the royal graves excavated by George Reisner a century ago. Some of them can reach 90 m in diameter and contain hundreds of subsidiary burials; two funerary temples were erected in their proximity. The cemetery was abandoned just before the Egyptian conquest and a last royal grave was built close to the ancient city.