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ABSTRACT:
Japan continues to be in the vanguard of human–robot communication and, since 2007, the state has actively promoted the virtues of a robot-dependent society and lifestyle. Nationwide surveys suggest that Japanese citizens are more comfortable sharing living and working environments with robots than with foreign caretakers and migrant workers. As their population continues to shrink and age faster than in other postindustrial nation-states, Japanese are banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve the country's alleged ethnic homogeneity. These initiatives are paralleled by a growing support among some roboticists and politicians to confer citizenship on robots. The Japanese state has a problematic record on human rights, especially toward ethnic minorities and non-Japanese residents who have lived and worked in Japan for many generations. The possibility of robots acquiring civil status ahead of flesh-and-blood humans raises profound questions about the nature of citizenship and human rights. Already the idea of robots having evolved beyond consideration as “property” and acquiring legal status as sentient beings with “rights” is shaping developments in artificial intelligence and robotics outside of Japan, including in the United States. What does the pursuit in Japan of interdependence between humans and robots forecast about new approaches to and configurations of civil society and attendant rights there and in other technologically advanced postindustrial societies?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
This article grew out of a series of invited lectures I gave in Israel in May and June 2013 at the Bar-Hillel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, Edelstein Center (The Hebrew University, Givat Ram campus), the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, and the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, Tel Aviv University. Later versions were presented at the Department of Literature, University of California at San Diego, and the Designing Robots—Designing Humans Conference, Aarhus University (Copenhagen campus). I am very grateful for the helpful comments I received from colleagues at those venues. Thanks to Gunhild Borggreen, Snait Gissis, Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, Cathrine Hasse, Dafna Hirsch, Eva Jablonka, Galia Plotkin, Yossi Schwartz, Silvan (Sam) Schweber, Jytte Thorndahl, and Yofi Tirosh. I owe special thanks to Celeste Brusati, Tom Fenton, Sabine Frühstück, and Alexandra Minna Stern for their astute reading and editorial suggestions. A longer version will appear as a chapter in my book Robo sapiens japanicus: Robots, Eugenics, and Posthuman Aesthetics, under contract with the University of California Press. Research for this article was supported by the Simon P. Silverman Visiting Professorship, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University (2013); a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2011–2012); an Abé Fellowship (Social Science Research Council, 2010–2012); and a Faculty Research Grant, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan (2012).
Notes
Stone 1972, 455.
Freitas 1985, 54.
Tezuka Osamu, quoted in Schodt Citation2007, 123.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) launched the five-year (1998–2002) Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP), followed by the Next Generation Intelligent Robots Project, and most recently, the Living Assist Robots Project. The goal of making robots to augment the labor force and to assist with housework and eldercare involves collaborative research among universities, research institutes, and corporations.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense that researches and develops new military technology. TheDARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC, 2012–2014) is an international competition with the technical objective of developing ground robots capable of executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments. At the twelfth IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (29 November–1 December 2012) I attended in Osaka, Japan, several Asian roboticists openly expressed their reluctance to participate in the DRC because of its military orientation. Perhaps ironically, the top contender in the 2013 DRC was SCHAFT, a robot created by Japanese roboticists formerly associated with the University of Tokyo; Google bought SCHAFT in 2013, after the robot's impressive performances at the DRC (www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx).
Already, in the wake of PM Abe's nationalistic reinterpretation of Japan's “peace” constitution, Japanese robotics research is being incorporated into the weapons economy.
Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952.
Nourbakhsh Citation2013, xiv.
Beer, Fiske, and Rogers 2010, 74.
Regarding robot gender, see Robertson Citation2010.
Pfeifer and Scheier 1999. There are various forms of embodiment. Cognitive scientist Tom Ziemke (2003) identifies six in exploring the relationship between types of embodiment and types of cognition.
Pfeifer, Lungarella, and Iida 2007, 1088.
Barsalou et al. 2003.
See, for example, Takeno Citation2011 and 2012.
Long and Kelley (2010) provide a very good and accessible overview. See also, Kuipers (Citation2008).
Takeno Citation2012. Obviously, the discourse of self and non-self is complex and has inspired innumerable dissertations, books, and articles. Suffice it to say for the purposes of my argument, that as many scholars have confirmed, Japan is a society in which “the self ” is partially porous, situational, relational, and interdependent. Increasingly, psychological anthropologists are realizing this as the “norm” in cultures other than Japan as well, and yet, outside Japan, when it comes to considering the possibility of “robot rights,” the definition of “the self ” that is brought into play is that of the singular, rational, intact and internally coherent self.
Robo LDK Jikkō Iinkai 2007.
An informative analysis of the relation between manufactured goods and kami can be found in Swyngedouw 1993, 55–60.
Morioka Citation1991.
Kaplan Citation2004, 6.
Matsushima 2012.
The vast majority of “single mothers” in Japan are women who are divorced or widowed.
Official estimates put the pet population at 22 million or more, but there are only 16.6 million children under fifteen (Evans and Buerk 2012). Softbank's Son has long been eager to enter the household robot market. Pepper will retail for $1,900 when it goes on sale in 2015. Pepper is manufactured by Aldebaran Robotics, which has offices in France, China, Japan, and the United States, and is 78.5 percent owned by Softbank (Emotional robot set for sale in Japan next year 2014).
Brazil has the largest population of people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan. The 1.5 million Japanese-Brazilians are descendants of the mostly impoverished farm householders who immigrated to South America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the support of the Japanese government. As of 2012, about 1.6 percent of Japan's population consists of immigrants and migrant workers compared to nearly 13 percent for the United States. These figures do not distinguish between economic migrants, refugees, and other types of migrants nor do they distinguish between lawful migrants and undocumented migrants. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate.
Randerson 2007; Mechanical art: Japanese scientists unveil robot calligrapher 2012.
For more information on Innovation 25 and its sociopolitical context, see Robertson 2007. This proposal is accessible on the Cabinet Office (Naikakufu) website: www.cao.go.jp/innovation/.
Innovation 25 was supported by PM Abe's successors, although not as ardently. Political support for rescue and care robots has grown following the trifold disaster (earthquake, tsunami, Fukushima Daiichi meltdown) of 11 March 2011.
The robotic assistants will form an essential part of a plan to address the shortage of care workers in the country as well as nurture new spin-off industries. Left unmentioned, of course, is why there is a shortage of care workers: too few Japanese are interested in that low-paying occupation, and the government administers an unusually grueling Japanese-language exam that has made it virtually impossible for well-trained foreign nurses and care workers (mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia) to pass and thereby find professional employment.
Yamazaki 2006; Cabinet Office 2013.
Conservatives, like PM Abe (who is married but childless) are quick to blame women alone for the low birthrate. Many women desire a professional career, and it is still the case that marriage and career are considered to be mutually exclusive; the corporate glass ceiling is also very low for working women, who are pressured to retire early to marry and have children. Few full-time employment options are available to married women who wish to return to their careers after their children are older. Not surprisingly, a growing number of women are reluctant to get married, whereupon they will lose both financial independence and any possibility of career advancement.
See Robertson 2007 and 2010.
See www.accessj.com/2013/01/koseki-japanese-family-registration.html. Arudou Debito, a naturalized citizen of Japan, has made this contradiction, and the dilemmas it generates, the crux of his human rights activism (www.debito.org/).
Taylor Citation2007; Morita Citation2012, 360.
Regarding the issue of “Asian values,” see Robertson Citation2005.
Morita Citation2012, 364–65.
Fukuzawa was a teacher, translator, entrepreneur, and journalist who founded Keio University and the daily newspaper Jiji shinpō. He visited San Francisco in 1860 as part of a diplomatic mission and, in 1862, served as a translator on the first Japanese diplomatic mission to Europe. His subsequent book Seiyō Jijō (Things Western, 1867–1870) was a bestseller. Fukuzawa's face is on the 10,000 yen note, the highest denomination.
Morita Citation2012, 363.
“[The Declaration] states that all human beings are born to be free and have rights to live with dignity. Many people in the world, however, are not able to enjoy these rights. The United Nations has thus engaged itself in activities to improve human rights situations. Japan has strongly supported UN activities in the human rights field, believing that all human rights are universal.” (See www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human/.)
Arudou 2007. The most recent (2012) poll on human rights is accessible at www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h24/h24-jinken/index.html.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has mostly dominated Japanese politics since the 1950s, published a draft constitution in which human rights is defined as something “entitled by the State” and grounded in “the State's history, culture and tradition.” The household is also recognized as the “natural and basic unit of society.” For detailed information in English, see Repeta Citation2013 and Jones 2013.
Murphy andWoods 2009. Although human–robot coworkers are still a rarity outside of factory settings—and outside of Japan (where humanoids are more frequently encountered)—an interdisciplinary group of Euro-American scholars has initiated the new fields of robot ethics and robot rights. They have collectively generated a burgeoning literature, much of which is de voted to determining the social-psychological criteria necessary to recognize robots as independent, autonomous agents capable of self-awareness, which are the grounds for legal responsibility. (See www.ieee-ras.org/robot-ethics.)
Runaround (1941), in Asimov (Citation1942), republished in Asimov (Citation1991). The Zeroeth Law was introduced in Asimov (Citation1985) .
Mushi Purodakushon shiryōshū 1962–73 1977. Schodt (Citation2007, 108) has translated the ten laws, although my translation differs in parts.
Kerr 2007; Saenz 2011.
Miyake Citation2005. See also Robertson 2007, 379–80, for a more extensive discussion of cocreation
Murphy and Woods 2009.
Mehrotra et al. Citation2013.
Theoretically, at least, there is no reason why intelligent Japanese humanoids could not also become househeads, especially if competent humans are unavailable.
Robotto uiiku o tenkai shimasu! 2007. The first contest in 2005 was held at the Azalea Sunlight Plaza in the Kawasaki City underground shopping street, and the 2006 and 2007 events were held at Queen's Square in Yokohama. Reports on the events appeared in many online newsletters.
The third law underscores the different forms of embodiment: If a robot does not need to grasp things, it may not have fingers (Robo LDK Jikkō Iinkai 2007, 177–79).
Fujiko Fujio is the joint penname of two cartoonists, Hiroshi Fujimoto (1933–1996) and Motoo Abiko (1934– ), who created the robot cat. Doraemon's name is a combination of nora/dora (stray cat) and emon, a (popular premodern) male name suffix. The cartoon was published between 1969 and 1996.
That Tezuka Osamu gave Astro Boy his own robot family is possibly related to the robot's bittersweet origins, as narrated in the cartoon. Astro Boy was created by a roboticist as an identical replacement for his deceased son. However, the roboticist rejected Astro Boy when he realized that the robot would never mature the way his human son would have. Astro Boy was later adopted by an avuncular scientist who created a robot family for him.
Of course, Japanese roboticists designed “family robots” long before JIBO debuted.
See footnote 5.
Wabot refers to Waseda Robot
Komatsu and Yabuno 2004.
ōsaka Daigaku Komyunikçshondezain Sentμ 2010. Ishiguro is a celebrity in the field of robotics; he is most known for his “geminoids” or android/gynoid dopplegängers that operate through telepresence. For Ishiguro, robotics is a form of anthropology in the sense of studying humans. The author and coauthor of several books (in Japanese) and dozens of academic articles, Ishiguro neatly summarized his ideas in English in a recent interview (Ishiguro 2013).
Suzuki 2007. Wakamaru is no longer for sale, but can be rented within Japan; the robot is widely used as a platform for experiments by other roboticists, including those atWaseda University.
Paro is able to leave Japan because although sophisticated, it is neither connected to the internet nor utilized as a platform in various intelligent robot R&D projects as in the case of Wakamaru.
Chapman 2012.
Zainichi literally means “residing in Japan,” or permanent resident. Zainichi Koreans refers to Koreans who were forcibly brought or who came to Japan during the first half of the twentieth century when Korea was a Japanese colony (1910–1945) and their descendants. Numbering around 900,000, they are the largest ethnic minority in Japan; one-third have become naturalized citizens.
See “tokubetsu jūminhyō” in ja.wikipedia.org/wikija.wikipedia.org/.
Chapman Citation2008.
Foreign Residents Can't Claim Welfare Benefits: Supreme Court 2014.
Higuchi 2012.
For a useful review of recent explorations of robot ethics (related to, but not synonymous with robot rights), see the articles in Beavers Citation2010 and Lin, Abny, and Bekey 2012.
In 1999 New Zealand extended “human rights” to the nonhuman members of Hominidae or great ape family: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Spain followed suit in 2008.
Coeckelbergh Citation2010.
Weng, Chen, and Sun 2009.
Breazeal 2002. Breazeal's new “family robot” JIBO is an example of this concept.
Putnam Citation1964, 691.
Robo LDK Jikkō Iinkai 2007, 69–76.
Tanaka and Matsuzoe Citation2012.