Visions of the Future at the Japanese Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Material Culture Michael Shea, BA (Hons) 1st September 2015 Department of Anthropology University College London Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT 91, 437 Words I, Michael Shea, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: Date: _______________ 01/09/2015 MICHAEL SHEA 2 Abstract The purpose of this research is to critically assess how the future is conceived and presented in a contemporary Japanese science museum, based on ethnography conducted at the Miraikan National Institute of Emerging Science and Innovation in Odaiba, Tokyo. As a museum of the future the devices that Miraikan houses are often framed in terms of their potential uses. This means that the display strategies employed depend on utilizing conceptions of the future. By critically engaging with the visions of the future that are presented in the museum this research elucidates some of these underlying influences traceable to social and environmental concerns, and considers which among these are particular to the Japanese context, drawing on participant observation with volunteers and staff as well as academic literature concerning museum curatorship in Japan and elsewhere. The primary concern of this resesarch is the shifting relationship between technology and human labour, in which there is growing tendency to anthropomorphize machines set against the increasing mechanization of human behavior various contexts. This research seeks to demonstrate how the visions of the future on display at Miraikan can be seen as attempts to replace missing kinship relationships, or to reclaim ‘lost bodies’ in various ways. Current changes in Japanese society are reflected in the nature of the machines being created and in the roles these devices are designed to fill. The demand for cheap labour in a country with little inward migration and a rapidly aging population leads to fantasies about how these roles might be filled by further leaps in technology. Miraikan, as a forum for the presentation of future technology, provides the opportunity to engage with these kinship crises and is the ideal place to critically engage with these issues. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the staff and volunteers at Miraikan for their advice, friendship and support without which this research would not have been possible. In particular I am forever indebted to Tomoko Fukunaga, who was the Volunteer Coordinator at the time of my research. I am grateful to president of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Professor Yuichiro Anzai for welcoming me into his home and providing introductions to some of his colleagues at Keio, Todai and Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International. I am also grateful to Professor Kazuo Hiraki for providing me with hospitality, introducing me to his researchers and showing me around his laboratory at the University of Tokyo. I am grateful Professor Michita Imai at Keio for introducing me to several of his researchers at his Information and Computer Science laboratory. Among those I met at Keio, I would like to thank Hirotaka Osawa for being so enthusiastic about my research and allowing me to interview him regarding his work. Also, I would like to thank Tadakazu Kashiwabara who introduced me to his device ‘TEROOS,’ which is discussed in this thesis. I also would like to thank Shuichi Nishio at the Intelligent Robotics and Communications Laboratories at ATR for providing me with an interview regarding their research. I am grateful to my supervisors Dr Victor Buchli and Professor Susanne Kuechler for their guidance and support throughout the planning, field and writing up stages of this research. I wish to thank them, along with Dr Kathleen Richardson, for having given me the opportunity to pursue this research in the first place. I am extremely grateful to the trustees for the Sutasoma Award, provided through the Royal Anthropological Institute to assist in cost of completing the thesis. I am also 4 indebted to the UCL Open Access Fund for providing funding in order to make the articles based on this thesis publicly available. I would also like to acknowledge the UCL Graduate School for providing additional financial support. Special thanks is reserved for Diana Goforth for guiding me through various administrative hoops at UCL. Also, thanks to Yasunobu Ito for giving me advice before I left to undertake my research. I am grateful to my tutors at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in particular Dr Kostas Resitkas and Professor Richard Fardon, who encouraged me to develop my interests into postgraduate research. I owe a great debt to several spectacularly talented Japanese teachers that allowed me to make a rapid improvement in the language over the past few years, especially Namba-sensei and Torimitsu-sensei. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their endless support. This thesis is dedicated to them. 5 Contents CHAPTER 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………..………..13 Becoming a Volunteer……………………………………………………….16 Methodology…………………………………………………………………25 Research Context………….…………………………………………………31 Theoretical Framework………………………………………………………33 The Japanese Science Museum………………………………………………52 CHAPTER 2: Visions of the Future…………………………………………….…………………73 Life in 2050………………………………………………………………… 74 Songs of Anagura…………………………………………...……………… 82 Make Your Wish Come True……………………………………….……… 90 Tomorrowland…………………………………………...……………….…100 CHAPTER 3: The Story of the End of the World………………………………………..……...109 An Alternative Approach to the Future……………………………………..110 Science Fiction Dystopias……………………………………………….….120 CHAPTER 4: Karakuri……………………………………………………………………………126 The Tearoom of Zero/One………………………………………………….127 Karakuri Ningyō………………….………………………………………...132 ASIMO………………………….…………………………………………..141 The Turk……………………………………………………….……………150 6 CHAPTER 5: The Hands-on Model of the Internet………..……………………………………159 The Internet Model…………………...……..………………………………159 Museums vs Amusement Parks………………………………………...…..165 Making the Abstract Tangible…………………………………………..….175 CHAPTER 6: Friendly Behaviour………………………………..….……………...……………182 Friendly Patrolling………………………………………………………….184 User-Friendliness…………………………………………………………...190 The Kawaii Aesthetic and Anthropomorphism…………………………….195 CHAPTER 7: Robotic Pets and Virtual Companionship…………………………..…………...210 Paro the Robotic Seal……………………………………………………….211 Aibo the Robotic Dog………………………………………..……………..214 Robotic Companionship………………………………………….………...218 CHAPTER 8: Substitutability………………………………………….…………………………232 TEROOS: The Wearable Avatar as Substitute……………………………..232 Being Present: Sonzai Kan and the Uncanny Valley……………………….235 Surrogate Workers…………………………………………………………..248 7 CHAPTER 9: Conclusion……………………………………………….…………………...……261 Technology and Post-industrial Labour…………………………………….263 Areas for Further Research…………………………………………............267 Reclaiming Lost Bodies…………………………………………………….271 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………….276 Listed by Author……………………………………………………………276 APPENDICES…………………………..…………………………………………295 Appendix A: Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Links……………….……295 Appendix B: Transcript of Shuichi Nishio interview……………………….297 Appendix C: Transcript of Hirotaka Osawa interview…………...…………299 Appendix D: Transcript of ASIMO Demonstration………...………………302 Appendix E: Volunteer Training Information Sheet………...……………...307 8 List of Figures Figure 1.1………………………………………………………………………………. A Science Communicator greets visitors at the entrance to Miraikan. Figure 1.2………………………………………………………………………………. The two permanent exhibition floors viewed from the far side of the GEO-Cosmos. Figure 1.3………………………………………………………………………………. The Volunteer Room. Figure 1.4………………………………………………………………………………. Visitor map of the third floor at Miraikan. Figure 1.5………………………………………………………………………………. The Innovation and Future section on the third floor. Figure 2.1………………………………………………………………………………. Lifestyle 2050 exhibit artwork. Figure 2.2………………………………………………………………………………. The Songs of Anagura exhibition space. Figure 2.3………………………………………………………………………………. A robotic cooking demonstration with monmo character toys. Figure 2.4………………………………………………………………………………. Poster for the Encounter with Earth (chikyu wo mitsumete) film in the dome theatre. Figure 2.5………………………………………………………………………………. A child’s drawing of Doraemon on the ‘give your wishes shape’ (onegai wo katachi ni shite miyou) chalkboard. Figure 2.6………………………………………………………………………………. The image of HRP Pomfret at Miraikan alongside the statue of RX-78 in Odaiba. Figure 3.1………………………………………………………………………………. Inside The Story of the End of the World (sekai no owari no monogatari) exhibition space. Figure 3.2………………………………………………………………………………. The character for death (shi) drawn with a dead body on a post it note on a board in response to the question ‘What is the thing you are most worried about in life?’ Figure 3.3………………………………………………………………………………. A screen capture of the web page where visitor responses to The Story of the End of the World can be read. 9 Figure 4.1………………………………………………………………………………. Exterior view of the Tearoom of Zero/One at Miraikan. Figure 4.2………………………………………………………………………………. Nicodama the robotic tea urn by Ryota Kuwakubo, blinking in the Tearoom of Zero/One. Figure 4.3………………………………………………………………………………. A Reproduction of a Karakuri Ningyō with internal mechanism exposed (left), on display