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ABSTRACT
From the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese roboticists have observed specific features in the physical designs of humanoid robots that cause users to react with either fear or affection. Analyzing the sources of these reactions, robotics egineers eliminated from robots those features that might trigger negative associations, and instead embedded their designs with cues to norms, theories, and cultural references valued by their society. By analyzing Nishimura Makoto’s building of an affable artificial human named Gakutensoku, Mori Masahiro’s discovery of the phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’, and Ishiguro Hiroshi’s current employment of cognitive, social, and psychological sciences to overcome the ‘uncanny’ impression of his robots, this essay claims that the development of the field of humanoid robotics in Japan was driven by concern with human emotion and cognition, and shaped by Japanese roboticists’ own associations with the social and intellectual environments of their time.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my colleagues at Hopkins and elsewhere for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. My particular thanks go to Lee Vinsel, Patrick McCray, Jeremy Greene, and Loren Ludwig for continuous engagement with the ideas I express in this article. I am also extremely grateful to the editors of History and Technology for thinking with me and working relentlessly to help me hone my ideas and improve this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For example, Frederick Schodt’s, Inside the Robot Kingdom.
2. Followed closely by South Korea.
3. To name just a few: Petkar, “Robots will wipe out humans and take over in “just a few centuries” warns Royal astronomer.” Express, April 4, 2017; Neubeck, “There’s a very Real Possibility Sex Robots May Try to Kill You in the Future.” Complex, September 11, 2017; Kolhatkar, “Welcoming our New Robot Overlords.” The New Yorker, October 23, 2017; Williams, “Will Robots Take Out Children’s Jobs.” The New York Times, December 11, 2017.
4. See, for example, Ikegami and Ishiguro, Ningen to kikai no aida kokoro wa doko ni aru no ka.
6. Robertson discusses such plans in “Robo Sapiens Japanicus,” 369–373, 384–390; and more recently in Robo Sapiens Japanicus, 33–49.
8. See Bruun and Blok, “Techno-animism in Japan”; and Allison, Millennial Monsters. I am particularly saddened to see such explanation in the works of Jennifer Robertson, whose otherwise extensive and thorough scholarship offers insightful analysis of the ways contemporary robots manifest and reinforce social norms. Robertson, “Robo Sapiens Japanicus”; Robertson, “Gendering Humanoid Robots”; Robertson, Robo Sapience Japanicus.
9. So far I have not seen any references to such animism in the writings of Japanese roboticists. I did see, on the other hand, numerous references to Buddhist metaphysics. Roboticists I have interviewed brushed away Shinto connections as populist nonsense. Mori Masahiro, phone interview, January 25, 2017; Ishiguro Hiroshi, interview, April 3, 2017, Osaka University.
10. Jolyon Thomas (Assistant Professor of Japanese Culture, Religion and History, University of Pennsylvania), in conversation with the author, June 2016, October 2016, June 2017. According to Professor Thomas there is nothing in Shinto practice to suggest robotic animism, and if one were to ask a Shinto priest about it, the priest probably wouldn’t even understand the question.
11. See Nakamura, “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan.” Jacobowitz, “Between Men, Androids, and Robots.”
12. Roboticist Ishiguro Hiroshi literally shuddered when I mentioned the word ‘culture’ (bunka). In our conversations, he expressed resistance to the essentialist assumptions often implied by references to ‘Japanese culture.’ Ishiguro Hiroshi, interview, April 3, 2017, Osaka University. In recent article, Mateja Kovacic showed that ‘robotic cultures’ are actively constructed by interested parties. Kovacic, “The making of national robot history in Japan.”
13. Riskin, Genesis Redux; The Restless Clock.
14. Wise, “The Gender of Automata in Victorian Britain.”
15. Voskhul, “Motions and Passions”; Androids in the Enlightenment.
16. Tresch, The Romantic Machine.
17. Truitt, Medieval Robots.
18. Ishiguro, “Android Science,” 1; Ishiguro Hiroshi, interview, April 3, 2017, Osaka University.
19. See Barrett, “Psychological Construction”; “Context in Emotion Perception”; and The Psychological Construction of Emotions.
20. Clore and Schiller, “New Light on the Affect-Cognition Connection,” 536.
21. Wilson-Mendenhall and Barsalou, “A Fundamental Role For Conceptual Processing in Emotion,” 548–550.
22. Hutchins, Cognition In the Wild, xiv. See also Hutchins, “Material anchors”; and Clark, Supersizing the Mind.
23. Marcus’ Katayama, “Culture and Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation.” Richard Nisbett ties himself to a ‘historicist’ school of psychology and repeatedly offers disclaimers about the dangers of lumping together diverse cultures; yet despite describing a series of interesting experiments involving Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students, he ends up cherry picking examples that support a claim of a psychological divide between ‘East’ and ‘West,’ which is explained by such broad statements as the prevalence of Confucianism. (The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why).
24. For example, Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, Personal Dimension), Lorraine (Daston’s) description of artifacts as ‘crystallyzed experience’ (Daston, ‘On Scientific Observation’), Davis Baird’s material epistemology (Baird, Thing Knowledge), Steven (Shapin’s) analysis of cultural factors in formation of ‘taste’ (Shapin, ‘The tastes of wine’), and Margaret (Lock’s) investigation of cultural groundedness of definitions of death (Lock, ‘Deadly Disputes’).
25. Donald Norman occasionally collaborated with Edwin Hutchins, the pioneer of distributed cognition theory. See Norman, Psychology of Everyday Things; Norman, Things That Make Us Smart; Norman, Turn Signals.
26. Nakamura, “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan”; Jacobowitz, “Between Men, Androids, and Robots.”
27. Jacobowitz, “Between Men, Androids, and Robots,” 46–47. Also, the special issue of Energy that contained Mori Masahiro’s famous ‘Uncanny Valley’ essay also listed the ‘most essential science fiction works related to artificial humans.’ The list singles out Tomorrow’s Eve as the first and the most important work of the era of automata. Ishihara, “Robotto SF,” 42.
28. Mizuno, Science for the Empire, 143–171.
29. Mizuno, Science for the Empire, 19–68.
30. Dictionary of Ancient Terms, Komatsu, Reikai Kogojiten, 411.
31. See for example the inscription on the advanced design of an automated Japanese clock from the Tokugawa period: ‘By calculating the times of [the various solar seasons], aligning those times with ones displayed by the clock, and making them move, a clock was created that shows the seasonal time on its own (mizukara), matching the [time of the] heavens.’ Transcribed in Kondō Katsuno, “Furiko en gurafu shiki mojiban,” 5.
32. Jacobowitz, “ Between Men, Androids, and Robots,” 54–55.
33. The earliest ad I found for the play was from 13 August 1923, in Tokyo Asashi Shinbun.
34. Nakamura “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan,” 266–268.
35. Hatanaka, Chikyū wa ningen dakeno mono dewa nai, 78. Columbia University Alumni Register, 1754–1931. Columbia University Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Columbia College. Years 1916–1920.
36. Nishimura wanted to do research on marine biology, but between 1914 and 1922 all dissertations produced in the zoology department at Columbia focused exclusively on drosophila research. (Columbia University Archives, Historical Subject Files, 1870s-2016. [Bulk Dates: 1968–1972]. Box 59 Dept. of Zoology). Nishimura ended up pursuing his PhD in the botany department. (Columbia university alumni register, 1754–1931, compiled; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Columbia College).
37. Nishimura Dharma Daichi no harawata, 522–525. For more information on discourse about evolutionary theories in Japan and particularly about Japanese reception of ‘mutual aid’ theories, see Clinton Godart’s Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine.
38. Ibid.
39. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 28.
40. Ibid.
41. Godart, Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine, 119–120.
42. See Mizuno, Science for Empire.
43. Hatanaka, Chikyu wa ningen dake no mono dewanai, 15.
44. Aramata, Daitoa kagaku kitan, 32–34. Nishimura himself expressed the sentiment of Japanese ‘leadership’ in Daichi no harawata, 553–555.
45. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 14.
46. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 14.
47. On master-slave analogy in the technical language in America see Eglash, “The broken metaphor,” and Bennet and Eglash, “Cultural Robotics.”
48. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 14.
49. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 16. 学天則, read as 天則に学ぶ. Given the context of Nishimura’s writing, it would be misleading to translate the name into English as ‘learning from the rules of Heaven.’ See also Nishimura, Daichi no harawata.
50. Given the latter meaning, it is tempting to translate the phrase as ‘Learning from the rules of Nature.’ However, such translation would completely lose the philosophical and moral associations. On the other hand, ‘Learning from the rules of the Heavens’ would put too much emphasis on the religious dimension while eliminating ‘nature’ from the phrase.
51. On Katō’s social Darwinism, see Godart, Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine, 45–46, 64–65.
52. Nishimura Daichi no harawata, 549–554.
53. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 15.
54. Nishimura, Daichi no harawata, 569.
55. Nakamura, “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan,” 354.
56. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 15.
57. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 28; Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 15.
58. Nishimura, Daichi no harawata, 570–571.
59. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 28.
60. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 28.
61. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 15.
62. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 16.
63. Nishimura, “Gakutensoku no sōsaku,” 16.
64. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 29.
65. See, for example, Daichi no harawata, 569.
66. As discussed by Norton Wise in “Gender of Automata in Victorian Britain.”
67. For Nishimura’s discussion of women’s education see Daichi no harawata, 565.
68. Nishimura, Daichi no harawata, 577.
69. Jacobovitz, “Between Men, Androids, and Robots,” 54–58.
70. Hatanaka, Chikyū wa ningen dakeno mono dewa nai, 85.
71. Kageki’s interview with Mori Masahiro published in IEEE Spectrum as “An Uncanny Mind: Mori Masahiro on the Uncanny Valley and beyond,” June 12, 2012.
72. NHK Special series Asu o Hiraku [Unfolding Tomorrow], Robotto, tadaima kaihatsuchū [Robots – Now in the Development], 1970.
73. Nishimura, Gakutensoku no sōsaku, 14.
74. Cartoon by Moriyoshi Masateru in Kagaku Asahi, 26–29.
75. Takanishi, “In Memoriam: Professor Ichiro Kato.”
76. In ‘Engineering Masculinity,’ David Serlin shows how prosthetics were meant to restore masculinity, which veterans presumably lost with the loss of limbs during wartime. In Japan many of the disabled were civilians who lost limbs in fire bombings. Disfigured women were considered to be undesirable as brides, and prosthetics were meant to restore the feminine ‘normal.’
77. Cosmetic surgery for burn victims was thus a way to erase any visual sign that would tie the victims to atomic bombings. On cosmetic surgery and erasure of the war memory see Serlin, Replaceable You, especially the chapter on Hiroshima Maidens. For notions of contagion and discrimination of atomic bomb victims see Ishikawa and Swain, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings; and Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima.
78. Beth Linker, in her War’s Waste (2011), discusses a similar process of restoring social ‘normalcy’ by analyzing the rehabilitation of American WWI veterans. In “Nude Venuses, Medusa’s body, and phantom limbs: disability and visuality,” Lennard Davis shows that people attach normative values to maimed bodies in relation to the context of their presentation.
79. Raman Srinivasan remind us that prosthetics’ role as a disguise is no less important – if not more important – than restoring of the functionality of the lost limb. “Technology Sits Cross-Legged.”
80. Mori and Murakami, “Jinkō no yubi to roppon ashi hokō kikō,” 859.
81. Mori, “Bukimi no tani.”
82. After the term ‘bukimi’ was translated into English as ‘uncanny,’ some Western readers pointed out resemblances between Mori’s ‘uncanny’ and Freud’s ‘uncanny’ (in itself a translation of ‘Umheimlich’). Mori vehemently denies that he knew of or was influenced by Freud’s article. His denial of knowledge of psychology is very likely a response to the comparison with Freud.
83. Mori Masahiro, phone interview, 25 January 2017.
84. Mori, Yoshida, and Komatsu in ‘Discussion’ that prefaced the special issue of Energy. “Discussion,” 4.
85. Mori, “Robotto kontesuto,” 2. In his article about the contest, Mori said the vehicles needed to be driven by a single battery; however, in the videos from the events he says there are two batteries and this is what is shown. Professor Tatsumasa Dōke, the head of Tokyo Technical University Archive and a personal friend of Mori suggested that the game represented Mori’s ‘Buddhist’ approach: the solution to the problem is to stop thinking of the requirement that the robot ‘carry the weight of one adult’ as an obstacle. Instead, the builder should use this condition as an advantage that offers means to generate more energy. (Dōke, private conversation, June 8, 2017, Tokyo Technical University). For Mori’s Buddhist approach see Borody, “The Japanese Roboticists Masahiro Mori’s Buddhist Inspired Concept of the Uncanny Valley (Bukimi no tani genshō)”
86. Video recordings of the first and third end-of-semester competitions, from 1981 and 1983 respectively. Tokyo Technical University Archives.
87. Mori’s exact words in Japanese were ‘bukkyō de iu to zazen.’ At another point during the interview he told me that he disliked the English term ‘Buddhism,’ since Buddhism is not an ‘ism’ – i.e. it is not a philosophy or principle of a kind. A better translation, he said, would be ‘the teachings of Buddha.’ For the sake of comprehensibility in English, however, I have translated Mori’s phrase as ‘in Buddhist terms.’
88. Mori Masahiro, phone interview, 25 January 2017.
89. Currently an associate professor at the Institute of Innovation for Future Societies at Nagoya University 名古屋大学未来社会創造機構.
90. Interview with Hiroko Kamide, 1 March 2017, Nagoya University; Csíkszentmihályi, Flow.
91. Kamide et al., “Anshin as a concept,”1624–5; Kamide et al., “Relationship between Familiarity and Humanness,” 821–2.
92. Ishiguro, “Android Science,” 1.
93. In particular, Ishiguro relied on the work of James Hollan. See Hollan, Hutchins, and Kirsch, “Distributed cognition.”
94. Interview with Ishiguro, April 3, 2017, Osaka University.
95. TEDxSeeds2009 “Robots are mirrors of human heart,” 9:26.
96. Hasegawa, “Gakutensoku no ishō to dōsaku.”
97. Nishimura, “Jinzō ningen,” 28.