This book explores human-machine interaction in Japan, providing a new focus on how and in what form people build affective bonds to new technologies.
This book explores human-machine interaction in Japan, providing a new focus on how and in what form people build affective bonds to new technologies.
To gain insights into the feelings, identities, fears, and desires of people in our contemporary society, the book brings together perspectives from Japanese studies, cultural and literary studies, anthropology, robotics, philosophy, and game studies. Through such lenses it reveals how narratives about machines are not merely reflections of technological capabilities but, when it comes to emotional attachment, are deeply embedded in cultural practices and so-cial values. In addition to discussions by leading scholars in the field from around the world, the book includes two original literary contributions by award-winning Japanese authors, Yoko Tawada and Kei’ichiro Hirano, as well as interviews with Japanese roboticists, provid-ing readers with the rare opportunity to learn about the motivations and inspirations behind technological advances in human-machine interaction.
Shedding light on the mutual influence of academics, producers, and artists in the field of the attachment to new technologies and encouraging a dialogue between them, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of Japanese studies, cultural and literary studies and anthropology.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
1. Introduction: Astro Boys GrandchildrenTales of Longing,
Disappointment, and New Heroes in Japan Part 1: The Family Album of Emotional
Machines: Pepper and His Successors
2. Representations of Emotional Capacity
in Human-Robot Interaction: From Astro Boy to Pepper
3. Character, Desire,
Infrastructure: Manga/Anime Fandom Preceding and Predicting Technological
Experimentation in Japan
4. Characteristics of Artificial Intelligence in
Japan Part 2: Between Promises and Realities: A Critique of Popular Media and
Public Narrative
5. Hearts Meet Wires: Navigating the Ethical and Social
Implications of Care Robotics
6. On Posthuman Imaginaries and Japanese Robot
Culture: A Techno-Oriental Strand of Cruel Optimism
7. Human-Machine
Relations from Abacus to AI in the Sanrio anime Aggressive Retsuko
(Aggretsuko)
8. An Anthropological View of Social Robots: Ontological
Indefiniteness and the Subjective Experience of Care Technologies in Japan
Part 3: Inheriting Human Problems: Negotiating Dreams, Fears, and Gender
9.
Kawaii Aesthetics in Human-Machine Romance: Reimagining Gender, Cuteness, and
Digital Intimacy in A.I. Love You (2016)
10. Reframing Socio-Cultural Malaise
in the Technocene: A Psychosocial Reading of Kb Abes Inter Ice Age 4 and
Kazuo Ishiguros Klara and the Sun Part 4: Blurring Boundaries: Where Does
the Human End, Where Does the Machine Begin?
11. Beyond an Ontological
Divide: Possibilities of Emotional Connections between Humans and Androids in
Shk Murases Anime Ergo Proxy
12. The Obsolescence of Robot Commodity and
Human-Machine Relationship: The Case of Two Anime
13. OriHime Robot Avatars,
Affect, and Performance Digression 1: Artistic Visions on Human-Machine
Attachments
14. My Robot, Blurting Out (translated by Jeffrey Angles)
15.
Humans and AI humansOn Ambiguity and Change Digression 2: The Impact of the
Popular Imaginary on Robotics Engineering in Japan
16. We can expect the
relationship between humans and robots to be of a different kind from that
between humansAn interview with Tatsuya Nomura
17. Behavior that
complements humans is an essential characteristic of social agentsAn
interview with Hirotaka sawa
18. By creating communication robots, I would
like to ensure that there are no people who feel socially isolatedAn
interview with Hidenobu Sumioka
Elena Giannoulis is Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
