Techno animism versus Replacement Theory: A comparison of cultural attitudes towards AI, Automation, and Robotics in Japan versus the U.S.  (Part I)

 A.I. and the Law Series

Japan has a unique cultural attitude towards technology  , specifically robotics and AI. This stands in stark contrast to U.S. cultural attitudes towards the same. I noticed the phenomena during my undergraduate studies. Coming from an International Relations/Poly Sci background, I always pinpointed this dynamic to Japan’s unique relationship with the military and its society.

Japan’s constitutional provisions regarding the prohibition of holding a standing army, as outlined in Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, have had significant implications for Japan’s approach to technology, particularly in the realm of military capabilities. Article 9, which was drafted during the post-World War II period under the influence of the Allied forces:

• Renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation
• Prohibits Japan from maintaining land, sea, and air forces
• Prohibits war in general

  

The prohibition on a standing army has shaped Japan’s approach to national defense and technology in several ways. One major difference is how technology flows directly to the Japanese public. This contrasts with the American relationship with technology the military and the public. In the American framework the public must wait for the hand me downs, after they have been exhausted by the military industrial complex, and the security state generally.

Although this presumption was not entirely inaccurate, as I began to travel and learn more about the world, I come to observe that Japan’s stance towards technology may be deeper than I initially presumed. The most salient indicator of societal acceptance of a people, place, or phenomena is how those things are depicted in popular culture. Manga, and its animated extension Anime, plays a major role in shaping culture in Japan, and indirectly exporting Japanese culture around the world.

Any casual consumer of Anime or Manga can observe Japanese social acceptance of Robots and AI. A seminal cultural reference point is the early manga-turned-anime Astro Boy. Created in 1952, Astro Boy is a Shonen Manga, which revolves around the story of a young android boy living in a world where robots and humans co-exist.  

Selling over 100 million copies, Astro Boy or (Tetsuwan Atomu 鉄腕アトム) the mighty atom, as it was known in Japan, became the most popular anime of all time. When asked about the positive attitude towards the production and use of humanoid robots in Japan, Astro Boys’ creator Osamu Tezuka, who is known as the godfather of manga, stated that the core principles of Shinto and Buddhism have a lot to do with the connection.

“Japanese don’t make a distinction between man, the superior creature, and the world about him. Everything is fused together, and we accept robots easily along with the wide world about us… We have none of the doubting attitude toward robots, as pseudo humans, that you find in the West. So here you find no resistance, simply quiet acceptance.”

                                                                                                                                                                     – Tezuka

While androids in Japan were given an ambassador status equivalent to Walt Disney characters, the U.S. popular culture had a different take on robots. In the west, the arch narrative of the evil robot can be traced to the Czech writer Karel Capek’s 1920s play R.U.R. From this point is a long historical filmography including familiar highlights like:

• In the 1938 film adaptation of R.U.R. Robots became sentient and sought out to kill humanity. The idea of sentient robots becoming evil, continued to find a place in American narratives,
• GORT, from The day the earth stood still, (1951);
• HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey (1968),
• T-800 robots from Skynet in Terminator (1984) ,
• The Matrix (1999)
• I-Robot (2004)
• Megan (2022).

Notable exceptions such as Johnny 5 from Short Circuit (1986) remind us that not every popular American film, depicted sentient robots as inherently bad. However, these positive depictions were overshadowed by numerous films with subplots centered around the inevitability of robots being used for evil, thus making them evil by proxy. Meanwhile Japan continued to depict them as:  Sentimental friends of children, or apparatuses for good:

• Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot (1967),
• The Great Mazinger (1974).
• Voltron (1984), or the $25 billion Takara-Hasboro collaboration which birth the Transformers franchise.
• Battle Angel Alita (2019). (Manga fans can depend on Japanese collaborations to deliver an alternate positive view of androids, such as the lethal protagonist who protects humans from criminal evil cyborgs)

The American obsession with the idea of menacing robots, exposes a cultural outlook to which some scholars have placed Christianity, and it’s fear of overlords, as the original culprit. This is an attractive theory which may explain the  unparalleled presence of automatons in 12^th century Muslim societies.

However, if we utilize robotization and automation as an indicator to a societies acceptance of robotics, then we must contend with the fact that after Singapore, Japan, and Korea, the Christian majority nations of Germany comes in at a close fourth place, with Denmark and Sweden not too far behind.

Perhaps then it isn’t Christianity (alone) but Americas peculiar relationship to Christianity, vis-à-vis the transatlantic slavery, that informs American attitudes towards A.I., automation, and robotization.