Jennifer Robertson

Gendering Humanoid Robots: Robo-Sexism in Japan

In humans, gender is both a concept and performance embodied by females and males, a corporeal technology that is produced dialectically. The process of gendering robots makes especially clear that gender belongs both to the order of the material body and to the social and discursive or semiotic systems within which bodies are embedded. This article explores and interrogates the gendering of humanoid robots manufactured today in Japan for employment in the home and workplace. Gender attribution is a process of reality construction. Roboticists assign gender based on their common-sense assumptions about female and male sex and gender roles. Whereas the relationship between human bodies and genders is a contingent one, I argue that gendered robots render that relationship a necessary one by conflating bodies and genders. Humanoid robots are the vanguard of posthuman sexism, and are being developed within a reactionary rhetorical climate.

ROBO SAPIENS JAPANICUS Humanoid Robots and the Posthuman Family

ABSTRACT Japan accounts for nearly 52 percent of the worlds share of operational robots and leads the postindustrial world in the development of humanoid robots designed and marketed specifically to enhance and augment human society. Innovation 25, Prime Minister Abes visionary blueprint for remaking Japanese society by 2025, with the aim of reversing the declining birthrate and accommodating the rapidly aging population, emphasizes the central role that household robots will play in stabilizing core institutions, like the family. In addition to exploring the cultural logic behind the development of autonomous, intelligent, evolutionary humanoid robots, I argue that new bio-and robot technologies are being deployed to reify old or “traditional” values, such as the patriarchal extended family and sociopolitical conservatism.

Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide in Imperial Japan

On February 17, 1935, the humor column of the Asahi Shinbun, a nationally distributed daily newspaper, was devoted to spoofing an attempted lesbian double suicide that had taken place about three weeks earlier. The “feminine” partner was Saijo Eriko, a 23-year-old “woman’s role-player” (musumeyaku) in a popular all-female revue, and the “masculine” partner, 27-year old Masuda Yasumare, an affluent and zealous fan of the actress (figure12.1).1 (Yasumare was a masculine name that she chose for herself; her parents had named her Fumiko.)

Dehistoricizing history: The ethical dilemma of "East Asian bioethics"

Abstract This article traces the unsettling history behind the concept of “East Asian bioethics,” a term coined in the mid 1990s, and raises questions about processes of history-making (and -unmaking) in bioethical debates. A barometer of sociopolitical attitudes and orientations, bioethics poses reflexive questions about cultural, national, and global identity. The century-old janusian relationship between eugenics and bioethics continues to inform the popular perception of the nature and future of postmodern Japan, which since the mid 1990s has been shaped by an asymmetrical and ahistorical celebration of pan-Asianism. The bioethical dilemma posed and produced by a politics of renewal and strategic “dehistoricization,” together with “reasianization,” is introduced and analyzed.

HUMAN RIGHTS VS. ROBOT RIGHTS: Forecasts from Japan

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 countrys 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?

Hemato-nationalism: The Past, Present, and Future of “Japanese Blood”

In Japan, citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis. Naturalized citizenship is a possibility, but there is a tacit understanding at large that really real, or “pure,” Japaneseness is qualified (and circumscribed) by “blood” (chi, ketsu). Blood, in this sense, is understood as an active agent responsible for catalyzing an ethos, or a national-cultural identity. For many Japanese today, blood is understood in terms of blood type, which, despite its controversial serological history, prevails as a popular mode of horoscopy, match-making, and personality analysis. I interrogate the compelling fiction of something called “Japanese blood”—a multi-authored “hemato-narrative” that has been nurtured and sustained for more than a century. To this end, I assemble a comprehensive account of the constructive and deconstructive aspects of blood and blood type that considers the cuteness industry, eugenics, blood donation, and national identity.