Robo sapiens japanicus

Abstract

Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in the global mass media and on social media. <italic>Robo sapiens japanicus</italic> casts a critical eye on press releases and PR videos that (mis)represent actual robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental, academic, and popular discourses of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. The granting of “civil rights” to robots is interrogated in tandem with the notion of human exceptionalism. Similarly, how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body is juxtaposed with a deconstruction of the much-invoked theory of the uncanny valley.