faculty.wwu.edufaculty.wwu.edu/rcm/Doraemon/Doraemon - 2015 SEA … · Web viewJapan leads the world in ... Can we glimpse possibilities for the use and reaction to ECR for the elderly

Title: What We Might Learn from Doraemon, the Robot Cat from the Future, about How Japan’s

Elderly and Their Human Caregivers Will Live with Emotional Care Robots.

 Japan leads the world in robotics, both production and socially assistiveemotional care

robots (SARsECR).  As well, Japan leads the world in aging, in longevity for men and women,

elderly fraction of the population and rate of increase.  While substantial literatures examine

production robots and aging in Japan, reality has not advanced to the point where research can

secure a beachhead in SARsECR among Japan’s elderly (Jenike, n.d., Sabelli, n.d.).  SARsECR

are, however, evidentlywell on their way.  Media reportage of pilot projects is uniformly sunny

(e.g., http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27709828) while Sherry Turkle (2011) has now

come to expectexpects only disappointing simulacra of intimacy from intelligent personal

technology. 

Can we glimpse possibilities for the use and reaction to ECR for the elderly in Japan

before this nascent technology becomes “rapidly mundane?” Structural analysis of one of

Japan’s most popular and enduring works of the imagination, the weekly children’s TV anime

series ‘Doraemon’, opens suchcan open a window onto what will be.  An.  The earless blue robot

cat sent from the future and here in the ever-advancing present since 1969, on television since

1979, Doraemon “is not a pet, but a helper and companion” (Odel and LaBlanc 2013:70).

My major analytic technique is a modified version of structural analysis I have applied to

actual Japanese behavior (Marshall 2003), that understand symbols as patterns for action based

on structured knowledge rather than encoded meanings.  Of the 50+ full length movies,

innumerable comic books and 2000+ TV episodes, I will draw onfrom the Doraemon Television

Collection, Part 1, Vol 1-3 (2001).  Episode plots are formulaic.  Nobita, a ten-year-old boy and

the central characterFor method, I rely on C. Ouwehand’s (1964) structural analysis of the

cartoon, has a problem. He asks Doraemon to fish a gadget outflood of his pouch to solve it.

popular woodblock printsDoraemon resists but finally yields. At first the gadget seems to solve

the problem, but then unintended and unforeseen consequences emerge, making matters worse, if

funny. Nobita seems to have learned his lesson, but the next episode reveals that he has not.

Wash, rinse, repeat as needed. immediately followed the great Tokyo earthquake of 1855, that

era’s anime, for the link between creators and consumers in Japanese popular culture. 

For the link between creators and consumers in Japanese popular culture, my method

relies on C. Ouwehand’s (1964) structural analysis of that era’s anime, the popular woodblock

prints that immediately flooded the city following the great Tokyo earthquake of 1855. It does

not seem possible to demonstrate that the content of artifacts of popular culture created by

individual artists explicitly portrays fundamental categorical cultureal realities, but it seems

equally difficult to account for their popularity otherwise.  This tsunami of wood block prints

portrays the traditional folk figure Momotaro -- Peach Boy –- and his animal companions

descending into the bowels of the earth to quell with a drinking gourd the writhing of the giant

catfish (namazu) which is the cause of earthquakes in Japan. The gourd is small and rounded,

the namazu is large and slippery, but Peach Boy is heroically deft. Many of the prints (namazu-

e) portray the terrors of Tokyo in flames, but others show wealthy merchants tumbling thru the

air, disgorging and defecating large gold coins that fall to the laborers who will rebuild the city.

As a first pass, my analysis yielded results somewhat      My preliminary analysis is at odds

with available interpretations of Doraemon, e.g., “a breath of freedom and a glimpse of a funnier,

friendlier world where all dreams, even foolish ones, can come true” (Shiraishi’s (2000:293)

approving quote of Shilling 1997:44-45).  The unattributed Doraemon entry in The Anime

Encyclopedia (2006:158) takes a dyspeptic view: “…the cat’s techno assistance causes more

trouble than it is worth.”  A more moderate line seems bettermore suited to eternally engage

children's attention and their parents' approval: the futuristic gadgets Doraemon produces from

his pouch offer a constant temptation that, once viewers are exposed to their unintended

consequences, help us see once again that only ningen kankei (human relations (ningen kankei)

can be ultimately and intimately satisfying.  The question arises, thois, would these children’s

parentsthey buy Doraemon for their own aging parents?  The twist that makes Doraemon a

Mobius strip of fiction returns the world to its status quo ante at the end of each episode. What

price then, reality, then?

A second pass, however, leaves a more intractable question. The minor contradiction of the

story focuses on the way the gadgetry Doraemon pulls from pouch both solves and fails to solve

the problems Nobita suffers. Its major contradiction, however, is built into the synchronic

structure of the story at a deeper level. Doraemon has been sent back to the present by Nobita’s

mediocre descendants to reform Nobita’s character, to turn him from a non-entity into a 20th

Century Momotaro so that they will themselves enjoy a better life. The fundamental

contradiction of the story is that Doraemon does and does not carry out this task: he is willing to

carry out his assignment, but is constitutionally unable to pull it off. The story presents

Doraemon as a model of robot mediocrity himself, the best Nobita’s mediocre descendants could

afford; but every plot undermines this specious plausibility. It is not that Doraemon does not

work well, it is that he is the wrong creature for the job he has been assigned. Because he is

unable to resist Nobita’s importunity, Nobita never learns to rely on and develop his own

capacities. Whose role is this in real life Japan, the model on whom Doraemon is drawn and yet

dare not speak its name? Doraemon is a Japanese mother, not a mentor. He doesn’t demand, he

indulges. Doraemon does what he is sent to do, and he does not do what he is sent to do. We are

told he cannot, but it actually looks as if he simply won’t.

What this might tell us about robots and the elderly in Japan now leaves me feeling somewhat

dispirited. Mothers, in one aspect or another, are Japan’s caregivers. They show they care for

the dependent children and men in their charge by allowing or even fostering a relationship of

affectionate indulgence, identified in the ethnography of Japan with the concept amae. I have

not been able yet to find satisfactory evidence that this component of affection is a routine

component of the caregiving relationship between daughters-in-law or even daughters and the

dependent elderly for whom they care. And considering the move to non-human SAR care, I

wonder with MIT robotics researcher Sherry Turkle (2011:107), is the performance of care, care

enough? Turkle points out how the caring robots being developed in Japan can “take care of us,”

but they would not “care about us” (italics in original). Will Japanese robot manufacturers’

engineers build robots that care for the elderly on the basis of their personal intuitions of how

women care for children, for the engineers themselves, or for the elderly? What is the necessary

feature of engineers, mothers and robots that could let robots care about the elderly in their

charge? Is that even be possible? Can robots love?

The remainder of this paper will proceed thru sections on caregiving and the elderly in

Japan, SAR robots in Japan, a structural analysis of the Doraemon cartoon, and an inconclusive

conclusion.

BBC News: Technology

2014, June 5. Softbank unveils ‘human-like’ robot Pepper.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27709828. Accessed 8 Dec 2014.

Clements, Jonathan and Helen McCarthy

2006 Doraemon. In The Anime Encyclopedia, p.158. Berkeley: The Stone Bridge Press.

Doraemon Collection

2001 Doraemon Television Collection, Part 1, Vol. 1 – 3. Wondershow Co: Tokyo.

Jenike, Brenda R.

n.d. From ‘Warm Contact’ to Robotic Caregivers: Transitions in the Meanings of Late Life,

Disability, and Elder Care in Japan. Presented at the 2013 AAA Annual Meetings,

Chicago, Nov. 21

Marshall, Robert C

2003 The Culture of Cooperation in Three Japanese Worker Cooperatives. Economic and

Industrial Democracy 24(4):543-572.

Odell, Colin and Michelle Le Blanc

2013 Anime. Harpenden, Herts: Kamera Books.

Ouwehand, C.

1964 Namazu-e and Their Themes: An Interpretive Approach to Some Aspects of Japanese

Folk Religion. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Sabelli, Alessandra.

n.d. Elderly and Robots in Japan: Search for Intimacy and Comfort in the Performance of

Daily Actions. Paper presented at the 2011 American Anthropological Meetings,

Montreal, Canada.

Mark Shilling

1997. Doraemon. In The encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture. Ed., Sandra Buckley.

New York and London: Routledge.

Shiraishi, Saya

2000 Doraemon goes abroad. In Japan Pop! : Inside the world of Japanese popular

Culture. Ed., Timothy Craig. New York: Sharpe

Turkle, Sherry.

2011 Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New

York: Basic Books.

It seems right that Zhu Zhu pets and Chatroulette are the final “objects” I report on in

this book: the Zhu Zhus are designed to be loved; in Chatroulette, people are

objectified and quickly discarded. I leave my story at a point of disturbing

symmetry: we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to

treat each other as things. Turkle above, xiv

With the move to non-human, machine care, I wonder, just as MIT robotics researcher Sherry

Turkle (2011:107) has asked: Is the performance of care, care enough? Turkle points out how the

caring robots being developed in Japan can “take care of us,” but they would not “care about us”

(italics in original).

Basic Structure of the Cartoon: Doraemon : Nobita:: Doraemon’s gadgets : Nobita’s

problems

Basic Contradiction: Mothers do and do not build character

Mothers can help us live in the world, by making us empathetic, not by toughening

us up

Secondary Contradiction: Technology does and doesn’t work

Works: does the things it’s supposed to as advertised: silly but they do what Nobita

wants them to do

Doesn’t Work: it doesn’t make life better, it makes life worse: do they work too

well? Unintended and unforeseen consequences lead to undesirable results of proper

working

Neurosis: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, and so

Nobita’s character never improves

What Can’t Be Said or Even Thought: Doraemon is a Japanese Mother, that mothers do

and do not build character. How can mothers, so utterly selfless, so self-sacrificing, be

thought to have shortcomings as mothers, when they suffer so to indulge us and so add

their effort to help the next generation of the ie into which they have married, prosper and

succeed?

Nobita’s relatives in the future send Doraemon back to the present to build his

character so they would have a better life. And since they have little money, they send back

this cut-rate robot. The cartoon blames this fact, that D is not a first-rate robot, for that

additional fact that Doraemon is not building Nobita’s character. But what we see from

Doraemon is that he indulges Nobita’s every request for a solution to life’s problems with

technology from his gadget pocket, and while these always do what they are supposed to

do, there are unforeseen consequences that make the ultimate result worse than before.

What makes this fiction is that all can be set right again to the status quo ante. Nobita’s

character is not improved from episode to episode, however, and so there is always a need

for a next episode.

So not only does the technology of the immediate present not make the world better,

the technology of the future, in the form of both the gadgets from Doraemon’s pouch and

Doraemon himself, do not make the present better in any way. But it is not that the future

relatives send defective technology back to reform Nobita’s character, they sent a Mother,

which character was never designed to reform or create character in a child or husband.

What the relatives of the future have sent back to build Nobita’s character is in fact

a Japanese mother in disguise (Mother underdetermined) to Nobita’s childish child

(overdetermined). The Mother is the character in the Japanese domestic drama who

indulges (amaeru), but she does not build character, except in so far as children later, as

adults, come to appreciate all that she suffered for them. This is the mistake of the

relatives of the future, but it is a mistake that cannot be talked about. They should have

sent a cop or a pre-school teacher. However, no blame is attached to Doraemon, since it is

not a matter for blame that D indulges N’s requests. Mothers are supposed to indulge their

children, and their husbands.

Here the question is, are they supposed to indulge their parents?

Outline

1. Demographics of Aging and Caregiving in Japan

[2.] Family and Care Patterns

[a.] Intimacy

a.[b.] Indulgence

b.[c.] Ningen kankei – human connection

c.[d.] Care: Commercial, Emotional and Cooperative (Kōreikyō)

2.[3.] Robots in Japan

a. Industrial Robots

b. Emotional Care Robots

c. Elder Care Robots

[4.] DoraemonWhat can we learn from Pop Culture? Doraemon, Namazu and Structural

Analysis

3.

[a.] Pop Culture Then and Now – namazu-e and Doraemon

a.[b.] Structural Analysis: “And since the purpose of a myth is to provide a

logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an impossible

achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real), a theoretically

infinite number of slates will be generated, each one slightly different from

the others.”

b.[c.] The contradictions:

i. Technology works, and it doesn’t work, it does what it is supposed to

do, but it does not make the world any better; and in D, it makes it

worse, but can be set right again

ii. Doraemon is a Mother. Perin (1988), Peak (1991) and Kondo (1990)

He indulges Nobita, but does not build Nobita’s character, the

purpose of sending D back to the past

iii. Mothers do not build character thru their immediate behavior, they

indulge children and husbands. But thru their sacrifices and

suffering they provide a model which can motivate us to ganbaru thru

our suffering.

4.[5.] What does the future hold? If these emo-care robots are going to be popular, the

intimacy they create will have to be based on indulgence.

Doraemon Notes

2004 is the 25th anniversary of Doraemon TV series (anime first in 1979,

introduced in manga form in 1969). Fifteen minutes, two episodes, every

Saturday evening at dinner time.

coincidentally, Doraemon and I will share a common birth month and day,

Sept. 3, in 2112. (1948 vs. 2112)

Structuralism Notes

2015 is 60th anniversary of Structural Study of Myth

Web Links

1) www.doraemon.wingsee.com/index.html

Points to start:

1) Ubiquity: 2 x 52 x 25 = 2600 episodes (2 episodes take 15 minutes)

2) Saturday night marathon: a two-hour Doraemon retrospective

3) “Red Feather Drive” pin has Doraemon image

4) Bill’s Doraemon necktie

One long, and then one short plot summary:

1) “Let’s build a subway”

2) Nobita, Doraemon and Mama are downtown walking and Nobita is complaining

about it. They near Papa’s office. Papa comes out and is surprised to see them.

The family takes a crowded bus home. Papa is used to it but Nobita and Doraemon

find it exhausting and complain.

Papa’s birthday is coming up soon and Nobita wants to think of some way Papa

won’t have to ride the crowded bus. He tells Doraemon he will give Papa his own

private subway for a birthday present. Doraemon is overwhelmed, but Nobita

wants him to do it. Doraemon is flattered that Nobita has so much confidence in

him and his tools, and so produces a digging machine that is like a small submarine

with treads and a big screw tip on its front end. The two of them get in it and

immediately start digging into the back yard. They get lost and come out in the

ocean.

They keep trying. The digging machine is evidently hard to direct: it wanders

around under the earth like a drunken mole as the calendar pages flutter down

across the screen. They come out in a women’s public bath, in the lion cage at the

zoo, in a prison exercise yard. More days pass and Papa’s birthday gets closer, but

still no personal subway for him. Now the earth below their house looks like an ant

farm or Swiss cheese.

At last Doraemon believes he has the right map. And away they go once again. But

then they strike a really hard area. They get out and think they hear digging

nearby, but conclude that that it’s only their imagination. Act 2 finishes with Nobita

telling Papa just as they are all turning in for the night, “You’ll really like your

birthday tomorrow, Papa. So good night.” It seems they must have pulled it off in

time.

Act 3 begins with Papa waking to a present beside his futon. In the box is a

subway commuter pass for the “Nobita Private Subway,” good for the “home to

office” ride. After breakfast Nobita and Doraemon take Papa into a hole in the back

yard and Mama comes too. Sure enough, there is one subway car there; Doraemon

is the driver and Nobita is the conductor. Itte kimasu from Papa, itte ‘rasshai from

Mama and off they go, Papa sprawled out on the seat, dozing. As they ride along

Nobita and Doraemon cheer for how fine their subway is.

But then they see a light in their tunnel and slam on the emergency brakes.

They stop just in time to avoid colliding with a real construction crew putting in a

real subway. Nobita claims that the tunnel is his, and the crew chief accuses him of

selfishness, when there are lots and lots of people who need to ride a public subway.

Doraemon agrees with the crew chief.

So they try another route with their digger, but it stalls and Papa has to start digging

with a pick. Papa realizes this is impossible and Nobita weeps bitter tears of

apology. Doraemon too cries and apologies to Papa. Papa forgives them,

recognizing that they meant well. Doraemon then spots a thin crack of light, thru

which they break into the sewer directly below Papa’s office and he arrives at work

on time, not much worse for the wear. The end.

3) “For once in my life I’d like to get a hundred”

Nobita is a terrible student but wants good grades without studying. Doraemon

says “You’re hopeless” and gives him a “computer pencil” that simply writes the

correct answers automatically on the homework page. Nobita rushes over to

Shizuka’s house with it, despite Doraemon’s misgivings. Along the way he does

Giant’s and Suneo’s homework for them. Then at Shizuka’s house he blasts

through the paper work mountain her father had to bring home from the office.

Nobita wants to use the pencil on tomorrow’s test, but Doraemon says that’s

cheating. Nobita is adamant and Doraemon pulls a long face filled with

disappointment, but finally gives in. Nobita struggles with his conscience all night,

and by the time of the test his good angel has won. He writes his test with his

regular pencil, one that has always earned him Ds and Fs in the past.

When he returns the computer pencil to Doraemon, tho, Doraemon instantly

identifies it as a fake. What happened to the authentic computer pencil?

Next day, teacher praises Giant as the only student who got a hundred, or who even

did well on the test. But Giant’s dad realizes that Giant must have cheated, since he

has never in his life gotten a good grade, let alone a hundred, and so gives him a

good beating. Giant returns the computer pencil and is mad at Nobita and

Doraemon for getting him in trouble.

Also, “transformation cookies” and kaeru joke. The frog-headed guest says “Ja, kaeru.”

Two essays in English easily available here on campus:

1) Mark Shilling: Doraemon. In The encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture. 1997.

2) Saya Shiraishi: Doraemon goes abroad. In Japan Pop! 1997.

Shilling’s original article appeared in The Japan Quarterly. Shiraishi’s essay is also

revision of an earlier essay. They see largely eye-to-eye on Doraemon. Shiraishi quotes

Shilling in agreement that Doraemon offers “a breath of freedom and a glimpse of a

funnier, friendlier world where all dreams, even foolish ones, can come true.”

Shiraishi writes further: “In Doraemon, science and technology are intimately associated

with children. Nuclear-powered Doraemon is a symbol of the confidence and hope people

place in technology as the trustee of the future of their children. Technology, which once

caused total devastation, is purified by its association with and use by an innocent child,

and children are conceptually empowered as those who are responsible for befriending and

advancing science and technology.”

Well, I just couldn’t disagree more. More accurately, Doraemon is the negation of this

technological part of present reality, a sort of reducto ad absurdum. The technology only

seems to work; it works mechanically, but not socially. It doesn’t finally add anything to

the world and actually causes a lot of problems as it does what it is supposed to do. In the

cartoon, at least, these problems can be sorted out and life can return to normal without

the technology. As a cartoon, of course, there is no reference at all to the invention of

technologies of all sorts as a way for large companies to earn profits. Technology may save

labor, but it does not remove people from the technology – people relationship: people and

technology do not have a relationship any more than people and nature have a relationship.

So how will it ever be possible for robots to indulge the people they assist? They will have

to have agency. Can this happen?

Doraemon is Japanese, after all, so the cartoon is about the paramount importance of

ningen-kankei. Social relations are what matter and what must be preserved in the face of

the ever-appealing temptations of technological fixes, which the cartoon demonstrates

relentlessly to be actually the road to disaster.

In every episode, Nobita wants Doraemon’s technology to save him from himself and

others, and it just makes things worse. It does all get sorted out, tho, and by the end things

are back to the status quo ante. Each episode traces a similar dramatic arch of elevation

above the norm by using the technology, a plunge into the depths by its extended use, and

then a return to the starting point, accompanied by abandonment of the tools. Such a

resolution is portrayed by the cartoon and evidently greeted by audiences as success or

triumph.

Shilling even quotes Doraemon’s creator on this exact point, evidently without

understanding the remark at all: “When a manga hero becomes a success, the manga

suddenly stops being interesting,” said Fujimoto. “So the hero has to be like the stripes on

a barber pole; he seems to keep moving upward, but actually he stays in the same place.”

From the point of view of social relations vs the inevitable changes brought on by

technological innovations, Doraemon is utterly conservative, if not actively Luddite in its

sentiments: there’s no place like home, whatever home is like.

The self-referential and paradoxical irony of it all is that Doraemon was sent by one of

Nobita’s descendants from the 22nd century back to our time to save Nobita, and so the

descendent, from his destiny. But it is clear that Doraemon has failed to change Nobita at

all. The most he has done is make time stand still. Now, the future will not experience the

effects of Nobita’s adult life if time stands still in his childhood life, which it clearly has for

the past 25 years. Who’s to say it won’t stay stopped into a barber-pole-like (the

expression of the manga’s creator) or Mobiusmobius strip-like atemporal, indefinitely

distant future? Is this progress? Is this why Doraemon is funny? This paradox of self-

reference, however, encapsulates them, and so is made unavailable for inspection or

reflection by Doraemon’s young viewers.

Unfortunately, when he has the gadget, Nobita usually gets into deeper trouble than before,

despite Doraemon's best intentions and warnings. Sometimes Nobita's friends, often Suneo

or Gian, steal Doraemon's gadgets and end up misusing them. By the end of the story, the

characters who do wrong are usually grounded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doraemon

But it is not that the characters get grounded, but that the everyone is returned to the

status quo ante, and then grounded.

Do writers take it for granted that the changes the dogu make are reversed?

What to make of the fact that Doraemon is defective from the start? Defective, to save

him? The defects are a red herring, to make us think it is the shortcomings of the

Doraemon technology that fails to reform Nobita’s character. But since Doraemon is a

Japanese Mother, D is never going to reform N’s character, the wrong person for the job

by the very act of constantly indulging N’s demands for a technological solution to a

problem of character, which all problems of human relations are. Moses, Oedipus?

Tragedy in a lighthearted cartoon? Wizard of Oz?

Claude Levi-Strauss and Fujimoto Hiroshi are the one side of the same Mobiusmoebius

strip

“When a manga hero becomes a success, the manga suddenly stops being interesting,” said

Fujimoto. “So the hero has to be like the stripes on a barber pole; he seems to keep moving

upward, but actually he stays in the same place.” [ from Schilling]

“Thus, a myth exhibits a “slated” structure which seeps to the surface, if one may say so,

through the repetition process. However, the slates are not identical. And since the

purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcomingorvercoming a

contradiction (an impossible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real), a

theoreticallytheoryetically infinite number of slates will be generated, each one

slightlyslilghtly different from the others. Thus, myth grows spiral-wise until the

intellectual impulse which has originated it is exhausted.” 1955:105

Japan’s sense of care

Put in the stuff from Lock here first.

The tradition of extended family care of the aged in Japan continues into the present. At the

time Japan’s Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI) system kaigo hoken was introduced in 2000,

just over half (50.3%) of Japan’s elderly were living with their children or other close family

members (Hashimoto 2000, p. 3). However, as women continue to join the paid labor force, as

in-home care-givers age, as households of one and two elderly member increase, and as fewer

children are born, families lose their capacity to care for their infirm elderly members.

Kaigo hoken was specifically targeted to reduce the caregiving burden on families, especially

women in the labor force, yet at the same time was designed to help the elderly remain in their

own homes as long as possible (Ikegami 2000, p. 30). Ikegami focuses the conflict inherent in

these goals:

If we seriously consider this situation, I believe it is apparent that the system has been

set up with an excessive bias toward the idealistic objective of freeing family members

from the burden of providing care (Ikegami 2000, p. 33).

Yet family care is not necessarily the best care available, nor the best way to support the

integrity of families (Sugiura, Ito, Kutsumi, and Mikami 2009). Many people do want to be

qualified care givers, in the sense of having gone through a recognized course of training, but

those who do not do so are not penalized in this new system. On the contrary, the frail elderly

of the household will be entitled to all the care they are determined to need by a qualified care

manager, itself a novel position created by kaigo hoken (Yamada, Hagiwara and Nobutomo

2009).

Kaigo hoken gained foreseeable political support in the business and aging-advocacy

communities by encouraging businesses through tax incentives to provide employment to,

especially, senior citizens willing to work in the field of home care. It was the compromise to

gain support among women that made passage of the kaigo hoken law astonishingly rapid.

Contrary to the recommendation of economists and the medical community, the broadly

embraced provision that only care expenses from certified non-family care givers could be

claimed for reimbursement (except in certain under-served rural areas) suddenly freed

households from pressures to provide care through their own limited resources to qualified

family members.

Campbell (2000, p.95) observes that on this particular point Japan’s efforts to integrate

public and family care for the elderly diverge most fully from Germany’s: while the main

rationale for the cash allowance in Germany was the desire to maintain support by family

members, in Japan a “key reason why the cash allowance did not succeed…was the power of

an essentially feminist idea…,” that a cash allowance might raise the family’s standard of

living a bit, but rarely enough to really liberate the caregiver. Campbell records further that it

was women members of the Ministry of Health and Welfare advocacy committee who pushed

forcefully for this principle, absent from earlier drafts, during the preparation of the draft

legislation to be made public. And when it was, this provision gained strong and increasingly

widespread support from the public. In this way, the introduction of kaigo hoken dramatically

increased demand for home care attendants, and so, for their training as well (Tsutsui and

Muramatsu 2005, p. 225).

Nakano, Yamaoka, and Yamo’s (2002) survey results show how much current care practice

had by 2000 already veered from the traditional model. Immediately after kaigo hoken was

introduced, the service most in demand was nursing-home daycare service, most-utilized when

a wife was caring for her husband. As home helper care, the second most popular service,

increased, demand for nursing-home daycare services and caregiver respite services decreased.

Home helper care was especially in demand where there was no caregiver in the household

(Nakano, Yamaoka, and Yamo 2002, p. 300). The findings of Washio, Arai, Izumi, and Mori

(2003) and Onio, Kobayashi, Ito, and Mikami (2001) from the period immediately following

the introduction of kaigo hoken reinforce Nakano, Yamaoka, and Yamo’s (2002) conclusion:

the kinds of care a care-receiver needs most depend in great part on their relation to their

existing caregiver, or if they have no caregiver.

Further, kaigo hoken only reimburses for the services of Grade 2 (comprising both

housework and bodywork) and higher home helpers; consequently home helpers holding the

lowest qualification, Grade 3 (housework only), found themselves grandmothered out by April,

2003, if they did not quickly qualify themselves for Grade 2 certification. This circumstance

created substantial consternation still into late 2002 among Grade 3 Kōreikyō home helpers,

faced with the decision either to increase their qualifications immediately through additional

training, or withdraw from work that could be reimbursed by kaigo hoken. And so, as

demand for Class 2 home helper services exploded, what must have been expected was in fact

discovered: “Home-visit care is the service clients complain most about. The complaints are

mostly about the quality of the services and attitudes of the care workers. The root causes of

the problem are related to inadequate training of home-helpers” (Nakane 2004, p.19).

1) Nobita: “Waaaaaa?”

Doraemon: “It’s me. Hope I didn’t upset you.”

2) Nobita: “Who…, Where…., What….”

3) Doraemon: “If you ask me everything all at once, I can’t answer you.”

4) Doraemon: “But anyway, it’s all right, I’m here to save you from a horrible fate.”

The personal pronoun Doraemon uses for himself, “boku,” is an informal one appropriate

to boys and young men especially.

Robots

Socially Assistive Robots in Elderly Care: A Systematic Review into Effects

and Effectiveness R. Bemelmans et al. / JAMDA 13 (2012) 114e120

Given the aim of this article, to investigate what is published about the effects of SAR in elderly

care, no studies were excluded on the basis of quality criteria. A formal assessment of the

methodological quality of the articles found appeared to be of little value, given the small

number of studies reported, the very basic and descriptive character of most studies, and that

most articles found are conference proceedings. 115

Discussion

The reported literature review identified only a very limited set of studies for which a wide

search was required. The domain of socially assistive robotics and in particular the study of their

effects in elderly care apparently has not been studied comprehensively and only very few

academic publications were found. The studies that were found were mainly reported in

conference proceedings, underlining the initial stage of the application of this type of robot

system. In the reported studies, a small set of robot systems were found to be used in elderly

care. Only Paro is commercially available, AIBO and NeCoRo no longer are. The robot

Bandit is still in development phase. So far, the effects and effectiveness of SAR in elderly

care has not been proven comprehensively. Most research is done in Japan (potential

cultural differences), with a limited set of robots (mostly Paro and AIBO), and not yet

clearly embedded in a care need driven intervention. Although obvious positive effects are

reported, the scientific quality of the evidence is limited owing to methodological limitations (eg,

small sample sets, short durations, no control group, no randomization). The studies foundwere

mainly of an exploratory nature, underlining once more the initial stage of application within

care. On the other hand, the exploratory nature also emphasizes the important pioneer work of

the researchers and caregivers and caretakers involved in this relatively young field. 117

MOTHERS

Perin, Constance 1988 Belonging in America: Reading Between the Lines. Madison: U of

Wisconsin Press

“What does the bond between people and dogs have to do with out collective life? The

most puzzling fact is that their loving owners are also putting themselves and their

families at risk: when umnleashed doges become lost, strayed, mainmed or killed, their

owners grieve. To understand the ambiguous nature of this love and to suggest why the

ambivalent population of dog owners is so large, this essay explores the very

wordlessness of the dog-human bond and finds in it not a surrogate for a child but

symbols both of mother and of the hard-won trust that makes society possible.” P 107

Her point is that Americans assert that dogs love us unconditionally, while the dog

actually is prepared to find a place in a dominance hierarchy and are happier when they

have had obedience training. People are often reluctant to dominate their dogs. They

want to develop a relationship of trust and intimacy with dogs, to recreate that

relationship they once had with their mothers, but had to break with independence

training. Allowing a dog to run off leash is not to give it American independence, and

dogs do not become adult individuals, even tho we are also social animals, as are dogs.

Dogs are and are not property and are and are not members of the family. And at those

points where people insist on treating their dogs as people rather than dogs, damage is

done to the wider pool of social trust, as with bites and fear of bites, property damage,

noise, droppings and injury to the dogs themselves.

Here my point is not to suggest that Doraemon is a pet either as a cat or a dog, or a

generic friend and companion, but to go all the way to assert that Doraemon is a mother

to Nobita, not an American mother, but a Japanese mother. There are only a limited

number of roles imaginary characters can take. I have never been a fan of science fiction

because while the technology can be interesting in a moderate degree, the sociology is

always merely conventional, a thin and pale slice of daily life.

Mothering in Japan and America differ. The relevant dimension here is that while

mothers everywhere are caregivers, they do it differently from culture to culture. There is

an extensive literature on motherhood in Japan. I want to draw from two well-known

sources on here, Peak’s contrast between mothers and pre-school teachers, and Kondo’s

description of 40-something women part-time workers in a confectionary.

Peak, Lois 1991 Learning to Go to School in Japan: The Transition from Home to Preschool

Life. Berkeley: Univ of Cal Press.

Mothers and Preschool Teachers look the same, but they are night and day.

“In the popular wisdom of Japanese mothers and teachers the home and the

outsidetheoutside world are so different that the family cannot teach the fundamental

rules of social interaction giverbubg life iniun the outside world. The home is the home,

and preschool is the outside world, and the two settings require different styles of

behavior and habitshavits of self-presentation.

This discrepancy between the public and the private has frequently been described by

observersy oberservers of JapaneseJapnese society. It is institutionalized in the Japanese

language and indigenous description of the social world. The home, or uchi, is the

private, intimate arena in which one can relax, let all of one’s feelings show, and expect

indulgenceindugence and sympathy from other membersmemers of the family. Within

the uchi a healthy amount of self-indulgence, regressive behavior, and mild aggression

are not only cheerfully tolerated, but also encouraged as the indication of intimacy and

trust. However, in the soto, or outside world, one must learn to assume a genial and

cooperative public persona, in which individualwhichindividual feelings and desires must

be subjugated to the harmony and activities of the group.” P. 7

“Becoming a well-socialized member of the group does not imply that a child’s behavior

in the family should ujndergo similar change. It is considered unremarkable that children

and adults display self-reliance, cooperation and perseverance at school and still remain

dependent, assertive and impatient at home. Such a personality is termed uchibenkei –

literally, a home Benkei – after the famous samurai warrior Benkei. The appellation is

considered mildly endearing rather than opprobrious.” P 13

“Indeed, the conspicuous display of amae in the home is an important method of

affirming intimacy and trust and providing family members with the chance to indulge

such desires and thus demonstrate love and affection. Learning to participate in the

shudan implies leaning to switch between two codes of behavior – one appropriate to the

family and one to the outside group.” P.14

“Neither style of personal interaction is better than the other in the abstract; in a healthy

personality each should be exhibited in the appropriate situation. Japanese mothers

desire to maintain a certan degree of amae in their child’s behavior toward themselv3es

and other family members while expecting that the child will learn to display enryo

[restraint] toward peers, neightbors, and others outside the family. For most Japanese

children, the first time they encounter this expectation is on the first day of preschool.” 16

Kondo, Dorinne

1990 Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace.

Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Kondo has a long section from 293-299.

“First, women were instrumental in defining the tone of … the “work culture” at the factory: the

informal social relations on the job. They did so primarily vis-à-vis the younger artisans, in their

roles as surrogate mothers. Most of the younger male artisans were in their late teens or early

twenties, while the part-timers tended to be women in their forties and fifties.” 294

“Women could act as companions and maternal figures of the young men…. In Japan,

relationships with mothers are considered to be especiallyexpecially close, and they are highly

celebrated and enshrined in popular songs, cartoons, films, television shows, novels, and so on.”

295

“Women act as surrogate mothers…. They provide the young men with a humanized work

atmosphere, a source of support and care. They do much to foster a feeling of togetherness, of

“company as family,” where the work group, like the household, becomes the locus of emotional

attachment. This position is a contradictory one, for it replays on the shop floor the notion that

women are emotional workers, care-givers and creators of an uchi (homey) feeling.

Consequently, women strengthen their symbolicsyumbolic link to the household by recreating

this role in the company and continually set themselves apart from the central story of maturity

through apprenticeship and masculine toughness and skill.” 295

NOTE: HOW MOTHERS DO NOT TEACH CHARACTER HERE EITHER

“At the same time, however, their position as mothers gives them some position of power over

the male artisans andans serves to make them important, though formally marginal, members of

the company. In Japan, the position of care-giver or the one who indulges the selfish whims of

another (the amayakasu position) is actually a superordinate one, often associated with parents or

bosses. By asking favors of the part-timers or by actin childish, the young artisans a placing

themselves in the amaeru position of a child or a subordinate seeking indulgence.” 295-296

Husbands and wives and amaeru

Iwao, Sumiko

1993 Japanese Women. Harvard: Harvard University Press

“young women’s memories are imprinted with the efforts of their mothers to be of service to

their fathers; that was the way the older generation of women found meaning in life. Then, too,

there are the “maternal instincts” of these young women (also nurturedmurtured by their

particular upbringing), which cause them almost compulsively to lavish care where it will be

received. The domestically helpless husband – andans dome women do call their husbands “my

bigmybig baby” or “eldest son” – is a prime target for such care. Japanese women give greater

priority to their role as mother than to that as wife, but in fact the two overlap considerably.

A young husband, meanwhile, who long relied on the services of his mother (perhaps with the

exception of an animal-like existence while in college) very quicklyquickely learns to appreciate

and depend on these wifely services, shifting adeptly from the indulged son to the indulged

husband.” 88-89

Something here on whether women as daughters, as care-givers to the elderly, act as mothers.

This is the claim of infantilization, but is there amayakasu in this? Support, which the young

owe the old, vs. indulgence, which mothers give to those who depend on them? Children, young

men, husbands; but the old? Does anyone even mention the issue?

One of the central issues here is that the elderly are determined not to be dependent on the young

(sources Iwao 1993:57; ??)

But Traphagan 2000:151 elides dependence and indulgence in Lebra (1976:55) into patterns of

interdependence, each contributing as they can: “Dependency in Japanese society should not be

viewed as either a wholly positive nor negative concept. Lebra argues that dependence or

indulgence (amae) and the behavior that accepts indulgence (amayakasu) form a complementary

relationship in which one person is the recipient of indulgence and the other the supporter or

provider of that indulgenceindugence. Being able to play the role of dependent is an important

skill of Japanese social interactions (Lebra 1979:55). Those who can play this role are usually

readily responded to by another willing to take on the role of supporter. There are often mutual

benefitsbenefitrs of this interdependent relationship in hat both the dependeddepnede and

supporter can manipulate the other by either engaging or withdrawingwitherawing from the

interdependence. But when taken too far, a person who becomes self-indulgent and overly

dependent upon another will be viewed with disapproval as having a lack of discipline (Lebra

1976:55) 2000:151

And while people strongly feel “the need to avoid imposing on others’ comfort and freedom”

(Kinoshita and Keifer 1992:177), the bond of family allows some degree of dependence and

even indulgence: “Indeed, given the Japanese emphasis on the family as one context incontextin

which individuals (particularly the elderly and children) can legitimately indulge in dependent

behavior (amae), one expects that the ability to depend upon and potentially burden others would

be greatly limited in context that lack well-established social bonds (Doi 1973; Johnson 1993).

However, even withinwithint the family there are limits on how much a member can cause a

burden and on how much one is willing to be a burden to others.” 2000:153.

Lebra, Takie

1979 The Dilemma and Strategies of Aging among Contemporary JapaneseJapnese Women.

Ethnology 18:337-355

1976 Japanese Patterns of Behavior. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press

Takio Doi, in the forward to Frank Johnson’s Dependency and Japanese socialization:

Psychoanalytic and Anthropological Investigations into Amae. New York: New York U

Press 1993:

p. ix “amae, a Japanese word indicating dependence.” “It is a very gratifying

experience for me that my writings on amae have stimulated others to investigate and

explain this need for human affection.”

Either way, whether daughters (-in-law) do indulge their parents (-in-law) or not, it seems that

dependent elders would need, want affection, and so might amaeru and 2) it might get harder and

harder to indulge them as senility, esp Alz advances. But this notion of amae could correspond

to Turkle’s “care about.”

What about the suggestions that parents would want their own daughter, because she would

take better care of them?

And what of the idea that women might feel or at least be required to meet some particular

obligation to care for parents-in-law because they retired early and left the estate to her husband?

Robots, meiwaku and amaeru

“One also cannot incur meiwaku (burden) with a robot” (Sabelli n.d.)” Jenike 2013 AAA

paper.

“In one survey conducted on reasons worshipers attend sudden death temples, 93 percent stated

that it was because they did not wish to become bedridden and a burden on other people. The

second mose common response (18 percent) was that people did not want to suffer with a

prolonged illness like cancer (Woss 1993:195)” Traphagan 2004:26 Practice of Concern.

But amaeru and meiwaku are the same thing looked at from the different light of the degree of

affection of the person who is being caused trouble by the person who is making themselves a

burden. Children and husbands do not hesitate to amaeru to their mothers and wives, since that

is the mother’s/wife’s role, to take up that burden. But this relationship does not appear to

extend from the same woman in her role as care-giver to a dependent parent or parent in law. Or

as least they do not uninhibit themselves in a way that would easily let them impose on their

caregiver in a way that their request for indulgence would seem to be a burden for their

caregiver.

Is there any evidence that caregivers indulge their elderly dependents in the corresponding

ways that parallel their relations with children and husbands?