This thesis explores the robots of Japan in a historical and cultural context, to seehow they are co-produced among a wide variety of actors in a network. It is seen bothfrom the creators' side, through their scripting of what a robot should be understoodand used as, and also from the user-side, through domestication of the robots. I focuson how the concept of “boundary-objects”, have developed through Japanese historyand laid the foundation for robot acceptance. Different understandings of the concept“robot” has been constructed through a cultural-, religious- and social-historicalcontext, leading towards the science fiction representations of robots in manga andanime. Japanese people living today have read about and seen robots in fiction alltheir lives, a fictional script that has lead the engineers and inventors of real robots.In order to understand the robots in the Japanese society, I decided to seek them out,and have thus done one year of field-work in Tokyo and Osaka, in Japan.Methodologically, the thesis draws on observations and interviews in laboratories andscience museums. How the people working on robots think about them are crucial inorder to understand the robots themselves, and how people act around robots isgreatly affected on the amount of “humanism” they perceive the robot to have. I alsoexplain how it is to control a robot-twin, and see the challenges it raises when “he,she and it” becomes intermingled, and the gender and linguistic questions it ariseswhen talking to and about robots.Lastly, I follow the robots out of the laboratories, and into society, to see how theyaffect users as a welfare-technology. Japan is a rapidly aging society, and in dire needof manpower, especially in the welfare sector. One solution is to use robots for certaintasks, such as fetching of medicine, walking assistance and cuddles. How the elderlyusersaccept and domesticate robots tells us a lot on what roles the robots can andcan-not do, and also how they can be developed further. Constructing an identity of arobot nation thus consists of many elements that together co-produces the network atlarge, with an underlying cultural acceptance of boundary-objects, such as robots.
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