Families of Future Past

Chapter 3 continues the backstory to Innovation 25 and Prime Minister Abe’s plans to robotize Japan. The fictional ethnography of the Inobe family included in Innovation 25, which was expanded and published as a book, is translated and critiqued. Comparisons are drawn between the three-generation Inobe family and a wartime predecessor, the Yamato family. Eminent cartoonist Hasegawa Machiko was among the cartoonists who created the Yamato family comic, and her popular postwar comic strip Sazae-san is presented as another model for the invention of the Inobe family. In this context, parallels between Prime Minister Abe and his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, an influential wartime politician and postwar prime minister, are drawn with reference to the applications of technology and soft power.

Innovation as Renovation

Innovation 25 was introduced in 2007 as Prime Minister Abe’s visionary and futuristic blueprint for robotizing Japan by 2025. This policy proposal was supported by subsequent administrations and then revamped following Abe’s reelection in 2012. The conservative sociopolitical aspects of the proposal are elaborated and the use of graphic propaganda to promote Abe’s nationalist policies is reviewed. Members of the Innovation 25 Strategy Council are identified, and opposition to Innovation 25 is summarized. Corporate mismanagement in the aftermath of the trifold disaster of March 11, 2011 (3/11), is critiqued. Contrary to pre-disaster expectations, robots proved incapable of navigating the tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors in Fukushima. The Abe administration’s fostering of “robot dreams” among children and the general public is reviewed and characterized in terms of reactionary postmodernism.

Robot Visions

A discussion of fictional and actual robots sets the stage for a working definition of robot and a description of three different types of robots: industrial, humanoid, and android. Following a synopsis of the 1920 Czech play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)—for which the word robot was coined—an overview of the demographic and social conditions occasioning the development of the robotics industry in Japan is provided. (R.U.R. was performed in Tokyo in 1924, sparking a robot boom.) Also previewed are religious and philosophical approaches to human-robot coexistence. Japanese and American robot initiatives are compared. Constituent chapters, detailing the insights of a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and historical research, are summarized.

Embodiment and Gender

In humans and humanoid robots alike, gender—femininity and masculinity—constitutes an array of learned behaviors that are cosmetically and sartorially enabled and enhanced. In humans, these behaviors are both socially and historically shaped, but they are also contingent upon many situational influences, including individual choices. Chapter 4 explores the gender dynamics informing the design and embodiment of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, especially humanoids. It is argued that advanced technology does not necessarily promote social progress but rather, as in this case, is deployed to reinforce conservative models of gender roles and family structures.

Cyborg-Ableism beyond the Uncanny (Valley)

Explored and interrogated in this chapter is the development in Japan (and elsewhere) of technological devices, such as exoskeletons, that are promoted as a means to transform disabled persons into cyborgs. Disability is understood as encompassing a diversity of physical and cognitive “impairments” or “dysfunctions,” including those linked to aging, that are associated with some kind or level of personal or social limitation. Cyborg-ableism is premised on a whole-body ideal and thus is a condition attainable only by certain types of human bodies. The theory of bukimi no tani (uncanny valley) is deconstructed in the twinned context of disability and prosthetics.

Robot Rights vs. Human Rights

Since 2007, the Japanese state has actively promoted the virtues of a robot-dependent society and lifestyle. As the population continues to shrink and age faster than in other postindustrial nations, the state is banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve Japan’s alleged ethnic homogeneity. The concept of extending citizenship to robots is discussed in conjunction with human rights and policies affecting ethnic minorities and non-Japanese residents. Laws of robotics articulated by Isaac Asimov and Osamu Tezuka are compared, and the familial nature of the latter’s is analyzed. What does the Japanese pursuit of coexistence between humans and robots forecast about new approaches to and configurations of civil society and attendant rights in Japan and in other technologically advanced postindustrial societies? Chapter 5 closes with observations about human exceptionalism and Japanese exceptionalism regarding human-robot relations.

Robot Reality Check

Missing from Innovation 25—and from the Inobe family narrative—is explicit attention to religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. As explained in chapter 1, Shinto metaphysics provides a synergistic nature-culture platform for studying human-robot coexistence. Several Buddhist temples have begun to advertise funeral and memorial services for robots and computers based on the fact that these devices have profound personal and familial significance. These services also include recycling options. The implications of advanced technology, like robotics, in the service of traditional social institutions are considered. The inconvenient truths informing proposals to incorporate robots into everyday life and work highlight the need for a reality check on robot visions and humanoid promises.