Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2025. US$32.00, paper. ISBN 9781503641150.
Who wants to live a life surrounded by autonomous care robots busy serving your needs at home? My immediate answer would be nobody, but the question may become rhetorical one day, and we may not have a choice there and then. Or will we? Shawn Bender, cultural anthropologist and the author of Feeling Machines, investigates the interactions, set in the present, between Japanese roboticists who create care robots and their users both at home and abroad. According to the author, “feeling machines” signify “robots engineered to feel and designed to be felt” (xiv).
Through a decade-long ethnographic fieldwork in Japan (2010–2014, 2017), Denmark, and Germany (2012–2017), Bender presents fascinating and vivid accounts of our “iterative engagements” with robot technology that were developed and used in care settings. By emphasizing the concept of a feedback loop, the author depicts how “the effects of caring with robots … are entangled with the continued technological development of care robots, shaping the material futures and the kinds of care relations they might afford into the future” (186).
This book can be read as a sequel to a similarly stimulating, insightful, and provocatively titled book, Robots Won’t Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation by James Adrian Wright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023). Even if you are not an anthropologist or a Japanologist, you would still enjoy Bender’s book, which provides great insights into contemporary Japan, the case of a super-aging society striving to integrate robots into care practice and relations. One major strength of this book is the breadth of its thematic coverage, which could appeal to readers from various disciplines, sectors, and jurisdictions. This book is not just concerned with Japan or robots since it also deals with the future of health and social care and how technological/social innovation comes about. Also, what the book sharply illustrates is the interconnectedness of our “economy of feeling machines.” It describes the way economic and industrial policy (including research funding) is intertwined with developers and researchers’ efforts to align their visions to that of the government (Society 5.0); while in turn, the laboratory is now connected directly to our everyday life, as care robots are tested with and introduced to us.
By highlighting the interconnectedness between the government’s imagined blueprint for a future Society 5.0 and citizens’ (robot developers, researchers, and users) engagement with that image on the ground, the book successfully utilizes both bird’s eye and bug’s eye. On the macro level (bird’s eye), people’s reliance on digital technology is a global phenomenon; it is no longer defined by national boundaries, as it is an economy dominated by multinational tech firms. At the micro-level (bug’s eye), Japan’s unique characteristics are meticulously observed, recorded, and presented. One prime example is the use of Japanese words such as fureai (mutual contact/touch), kea (care), fukushi (welfare), kyoson (coexisting), iyashi (healing), yasuragi (comfort and peace), shiawase (happiness), kurashi (home life), and inochi (life), interspersed throughout the book. These words are used frequently in research, policy documents, and care settings, and have nuances that are understood in certain ways by members of a “community of practice.” However, some of these terms are often employed as slogans or PR material without concrete actions involved or specific meanings. These nuances are captured very well in the book, and in this sense, the book will please specialists in East Asia and ethnolinguistics as well.
Bender’s use of the feedback loop concept and metaphor is also interesting, as it evokes a circular image, as opposed to the conventional innovation adoption curve or linear process based on the idea of early adopters, which is a breakthrough and the book’s tipping point. Although we know the process does not evolve in the shape of a curve or line, our curious minds would like to know more about why the author singles out care robots as particularly distinct in comparison to other potential feeling machines such as transfer robots that are operating at airports, hospitals, and restaurants. Is this because even in our modern times tinkering with digital technology (including sensors, monitors, and ICT equipment) in care, we are still cautious and resistant when it comes to robots? Here emerges one essential question to ask ourselves: Who really makes the decision to develop, adopt, use, and improve these feeling machines in care?
It is worth noting here that the Japanese welfare state, unlike Denmark, has always left room for individuals, families, and communities for self and mutual support, prioritizing economic and industrial growth. Northern Europe and Japan differ in the logic and social structure around “who cares?” Furthermore, there has long existed a discourse around “technology-intensive nation, Japan” (gijyutsu rikkoku Nippon) and its monodukuri culture. They have both positive and negative aspects but recognizing a path-dependent nature of technology use for care in Japan, it is important to trace the history of engineers’ contributions to the development of assistive technology as their craftsmanship and “playfulness” (asobigokoro) has yielded some remarkable results for older adults and people with disabilities (see Tohru Ifukube, Challenges of Welfare Engineering, Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 2004 [in Japanese]).
Last but not least, although I am a culprit myself, having co-produced a film Circuits of Care: Ageing and Japan’s Robot Revolution (with David Prendergast, 2021) on the theme, one must also ask this question: What is it that fascinates us about robots and care? The author highlights the capacity of robots to respond to changes in emotional expression and behaviour in real time (i.e., the “feedback” effect) as one powerful factor to distinguish them from other types of analog or digital technologies. But the robots (Paro, AIBO, and HAL) highlighted here in the book are all high-tech, and most facilities and individuals cannot really afford them. Since the use and lifecycle of robots keeps attracting attention and interpretations, for some reason, this must reflect our own curiosity and anxiety about robots and whether robots will really give us more-than-human care … or less? Yet one thing is clear—that is, in our global entanglements, robots, autonomation, and care will remain topics of our conversations and research in all circles for years to come, irrespective of where we live and who we are.
Naonori Kodate
University College Dublin, Dublin