Sometime in the late 1980s, I participated in a meeting organized by the Honda Foundation in which a Japanese professor--I can't remember his name--made the case that the Japanese had more success integrating robots into society because of their country's indigenous Shinto religion, which remains the official national religion of Japan. Followers of Shinto, unlike Judeo-Christian monotheists and the Greeks before them, do not believe that humans are particularly "special." Instead, there are spirits in everything, rather like the Force in Star Wars. Nature doesn't belong to us, we belong to Nature, and spirits live in everything, including rocks, tools, homes, and even empty spaces. The West, the professor contended, has a problem with the idea of things having spirits and feels that anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like attributes to things or animals, is childish, primitive, or even bad.

As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy. Such programs caused many of us kids to become giddy with dreams of becoming bionic superheroes. Robots have always been part of the Japanese psyche--our hero, Astro Boy, was officially entered into the legal registry as a resident of the city of Niiza, just north of Tokyo, which, as any non-Japanese can tell you, is no easy feat. Not only do we Japanese have no fear of our new robot overlords, we're kind of looking forward to them. It's not that Westerners haven't had their fair share of friendly robots like R2-D2 and Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid.

As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion," which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy. Such programs caused many of us kids to become giddy with dreams of becoming bionic superheroes. Robots have always been part of the Japanese psyche--our hero, Astro Boy, was officially entered into the legal registry as a resident of the city of Niiza, just north of Tokyo, which, as any non-Japanese can tell you, is no easy feat. Not only do we Japanese have no fear of our new robot overlords, we're kind of looking forward to them. It's not that Westerners haven't had their fair share of friendly robots like R2-D2 and Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid.