https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6004-6949
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ABSTRACT
Japan faces a large and rapidly growing care labor shortage. A common assumption is that the government has a choice between alternatives that will shape the future of its institutional elderly care provision: increase the number of migrant caregivers, or use robots and other emergent technologies to substitute for human carers. This article, based on data from seven months’ ethnographic fieldwork at an elderly care home in Japan that was introducing three different types of care robot, challenges this binary framing. The introduction of these robots served to reconfigure care – increasing the amount of work tasks for human caregivers, deskilling aspects of care labor, and raising overall costs. The robots displaced rather than replaced human labor, recalibrating the distance between carers and recipients of care. While such devices may have been intended by politicians and engineers to solve Japan’s care crisis by replacing human caregivers, the reality of robot use makes this unlikely in the foreseeable future. Yet by reconfiguring care and helping overcome linguistic and cultural barriers – rendering it “culturally odorless” – robots may facilitate the introduction of migrant caregivers at the cost of the further precaritization, commodification, and devaluation of care work.
KEYWORDS:
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank X and the care staff and residents at Sakura for giving their time and sharing their views and experiences so generously. I would also like to thank Professor Gonçalo Santos at the University of Hong Kong and Russell Henshaw for their valuable and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers and editor for their extremely helpful feedback and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
James Wright is the 2019 Michelin Fellow at the Fondation France-Japon of the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He received a Ph.D. in science and technology studies from the University of Hong Kong, where his dissertation examined the development and use of care robots in Japan. His current research focuses on Japanese public innovation policy.
ORCID
James Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6004-6949
Notes
1 Sakura and all names of informants in this article are pseudonyms. “X” is deliberately chosen as a culturally non-specific pseudonym to protect the identity of the manager.
2 Allison Citation2013; Masuda Citation2014.
3 Cabinet Office Citation2018.
4 Yamauchi Citation2015.
5 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Citation2018.
6 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Citation2018.
7 Campbell Citation1992; Peng Citation2002; Ochiai and Hosoya Citation2013.
8 See, for example, Emont Citation2017. Robertson Citation2014, Citation2018 references Japanese government surveys indicating that a significant proportion of public opinion was opposed to foreign caregivers (citing, for example, Yamazaki Citation2006). However, she cautions that public opinion can be manipulated via such surveys, as discussed further below.
9 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) Citation2017. The literal translation is closer to “special elderly nursing home” but I use “public elderly care home” to avoid possible confusion that might arise from the word “special” (as it is in fact the most common type of care facility), and to indicate that the home is publicly funded via the Long Term Care Insurance system.
10 MHLW Citation2017; Care Work Stabilisation Centre Citation2017. Sakura had thirty-seven care staff (an almost equal mix of permanent and temporary or part-time staff) and eighty residents (mainly permanent, with some short stay residents). The mean age of caregivers was forty-four; the mean age of residents was eighty-nine, and their mean care level was 3.9 on the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare scale. This meant that almost all residents had some degree of dementia or significant physical disability; more than half used wheelchairs.
11 Pepper was designed for the Japanese market by French company Aldebaran. Aldebaran was acquired by SoftBank, a large Japanese conglomerate, in 2013, and rebranded as SoftBank Robotics.
12 Japan Times Citation201Citation6.
13 Asahi Shimbun Citation2018.
14 Asahi Shimbun Citation2018; Iwamoto Citation2016; Osumi Citation2018.
15 Robertson Citation2010.
16 Robertson Citation2018, 23, her emphasis; see also Citation2007, Citation2014.
17 Sabanović Citation2014.
18 Kovacic Citation2018.
19 Sparrow and Sparrow Citation2006; Sharkey and Sharkey Citation2012.
20 Parks Citation2010, 116.
21 Vallor Citation2015.
22 Leeson Citation2017, 7.
23 Leeson Citation2017, 183, applying Alfred Gell’s concept of “mind-traps.”
24 Hasse Citation2013.
25 Hasse Citation2013, 92.
26 Robertson Citation2018, 4.
27 Frey and Osborne Citation2013; Brynjolfsson Citation2014; Smith and Anderson Citation2014; Ford Citation2015; McKinsey Global Institute Citation2017.
28 Strauss Citation2016.
29 Akashi Citation2014.
30 Japan Times Citation201Citation8; see also Świtek Citation2016. It is important to note that this qualification is not a requirement for becoming a professional caregiver for Japanese citizens (in 2009, only around thirty percent of Japanese caregivers held this certification), and some foreign caregivers are already long-term residents in Japan who have switched from other careers, and therefore do not require it in order to gain permanent residency. Nevertheless, the figure is indicative of the relatively small number of migrant caregivers in Japan.
31 As Świtek notes in her work on the experience of Indonesian caregivers in Japan, “candidates” entering through Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with predominantly Southeast Asian countries are required to take this exam within four years. If they fail, they must leave the country. Due to the difficulty of the exam and level of Japanese language required to pass it, the pass rate for foreigners is low compared to Japanese candidates. Indeed, not all of those EPA candidates who pass the exam would necessarily remain in Japan, since their treatment by employers at care homes often makes the prospect of living in Japan in the long term unattractive (Świtek Citation2016).
32 Wright Citation2018b; Ishiguro Citation2018.
33 Robertson Citation2018, 121–123.
34 Robertson Citation2010, 135.
35 Wagner Citation2013; Robertson Citation2007, Citation2014, Citation2018. This continued in his second term with the establishment of the Robot Revolution Initiative, which he announced was intended to “spread the use of robotics from large-scale factories to every corner of our economy and society” (Bremner Citation2015).
36 The name “Inobe” plays on the transliteration into Japanese of the word “innovation.”
37 See Robertson Citation2018 for a translation and lucid analysis of Innovation 25.
38 Robertson Citation2018, 57.
39 Robertson notes that a kidnapper who is tracked down by advanced surveillance technology in the story is described in a way that is “suggestively foreign” (Robertson Citation2018, 59).
40 See http://sagamirobot.pref.kanagawa.jp/anime/ (accessed February 7, 2019).
41 Schodt Citation1988.
42 See, for example, Nakayama Citation2006.
43 Sakanaka Citation2007.
44 Harden Citation2008. In a discussion of Sakanaka’s work in relation to the future of care in Japan, anthropologist Beata Świtek analyses Japanese media discourses that present a positive view of migrant carers as kind, filial, and caring, and suggests that this also presents an “alternative” imaginary future – “an exercise in re-imagining a different definition of Japanese society” (Świtek Citation2014, 277).
45 Ito Citation2007; Wagner Citation2013; Sabanović Citation2014.
46 According to some surveys, the level of Japanese public enthusiasm about robots is comparable to that of other developed countries, and research shows negative as well as positive opinions, including anxiety concerning the future use of robots. See for example Broadbent, Stafford, and MacDonald Citation2009; Nomura et al. Citation2009. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this observation.
47 Robertson Citation2018, 27.
48 Robertson Citation2018, 19.
49 Robertson Citation2018, 19.
50 Świtek Citation2016, 269–271. While I found that many of my roboticist informants shared the view of the difficulties of integrating guest workers or immigrants into Japanese regimes of care, this was reflected to a far lesser extent among the Japanese caregivers and residents at Sakura, although unfortunately there is not enough space to discuss their views in detail here. It is, however, important to question the widely held assumption that elderly Japanese people are xenophobic and refuse to “accept” foreign caregivers.
51 See Pols and Moser Citation2009.
52 Lopez Citation2012.
53 Cf. Świtek Citation2016.
54 In a 2017 interview, X contrasted Pepper with Kabochan, a companion robot shaped like a soft-toy model of a little boy, which we had seen at a robot care exhibition in Tokyo: “I’m not against Kabochan – it makes for good cover art, good sales material – but it’s not a real robot.”
55 Pepper has no officially designated gender, although representatives from SoftBank told me that people often said that it had quite a female face.
56 As described, for example, by SoftBank Robotics’ Chief Business Officer Yoshida Kenichi (https://www.japansociety.org/event/meet-pepper-the-worlds-first-humanoid-robot-that-reads-human-emotions; accessed February 7, 2019).
57 SoftBank Presentation to author at the University of Hong Kong, March 27, 2018.
58 Liu Citation2017.
59 Foster Citation2018.
60 Two versions of Pepper were marketed and available for sale at the time of my fieldwork: “Pepper,” which had relatively basic functions; and “Pepper for Biz,” which was aimed at businesses and had more capabilities and apps available to use.
61 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Citation2016.
62 See White Citation2018.
63 “Ritsuko-Style Rexercise” was developed by Fubright Communications using a recreational exercise routine developed by Yamazaki Ritsuko, the managing director of a leisure research center. “Rexercise” is a portmanteau of “recreational exercise”.
64 For the importance of onomatopoeic language in Japanese care, see Hosoma Citation2016.
65 See, for example, Leeson’s (Citation2017) account of the implementation of Telenoid, a Japanese tele-operated social robot, at care facilities in Denmark. Telenoid took additional time to use, and for this reason, care staff ultimately rejected it.
66 See Wright Citation2018a.
67 Such reactions seem to be not unusual responses among users of Paro with advanced dementia. Cf. Turkle et al. Citation2006; Ambo Citation2007; Hasse Citation2013; University of Texas at Tyler Magazine Citation2016; Leeson Citation2017. In a case described by Hasse (Citation2013), this led to a reorganization of work routines due to the need for more careful observation by caregivers.
68 During interviews with managers and staff at several Japanese care homes that had purchased care robots, as well as with representatives from care robotics companies, I encountered substantial evidence that staff and residents largely stopped using the robots within a few months of their introduction. Investigations of robotic use in a U.S. care home and a Danish nursing home suggest that the additional work involved in implementing robots in the workplace might limit thier long term use. See Taggart, Turkle, and Kidd Citation2005, 5; Hasse Citation2013.
69 Parks Citation2010, 103–104.
70 Parks Citation2010, 116.
71 Mol, Moser, and Pols Citation2010, 14.
72 Judy Wajcman’s analyses of domestic technologies provide salient parallel cases of how the introduction of supposedly labor-saving devices demanded additional, less overt forms of labor, such as new tasks of maintaining and upgrading digital infrastructure in the home – reconfiguring rather than reducing domestic chores. See Wajcman Citation2015, Citation2016.
73 Vallor Citation2015.
74 Asahi Shimbun Citation2018.
75 Świtek Citation2016.
76 Parks Citation2010.
77 Iwabuchi Citation2002, 24.
78 As described, for example, by Świtek Citation2016.
79 Japanese caregivers and many other Japanese informants I spoke to specifically cited foreign caregivers’ lack of knowledge of traditional Japanese songs as a key reason for why they could not be properly accepted in Japan. Song was certainly an important part of care at Sakura, in the form of frequent karaoke sessions, weekly music therapy, and visits from a volunteer chorus group. Perhaps for this reason, X was initially very keen to have Pepper sing the Japanese national anthem (Kimigayo) or local songs in order to impress both residents and staff, although it was ultimately not possible to choose songs to sing with the trial model provided to us.
80 Wright Citation2018b. See also Guevarra’s (Citation2018) fascinating parallel case study of the brokering of Filipino English-teaching virtual labor in South Korea via the telepresence robot “Engkey.”
81 Wright Citation2018a; Sparrow and Sparrow Citation2006; Folbre Citation2006; Parks Citation2010.
82 Vallor Citation2015.
83 Cf. Allison Citation2013.
84 I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this formulation.