(Japanese) truth is stranger than fiction

Photos from the article cited below:

http://tinyurl.com/oqglgzy

http://www.pinktentacle.com/images/actroid_der2.jpg

The gynoid is over-determinedly feminine,
from her breathy, girlish voice, to her shaggy brown hair and
manicured nails. She is dressed in a white cheerleader’s sweatshirt
emblazoned with ‘I ♥ Hello Kitty,’ a black miniskirt hemmed
with white lace, and chartreuse pumps festooned with a large bow
of the same color. In the Youtube spot, Actroid Repliee Q2 protectively
covers her chest with her right arm and, in a teasingly cute
voice, warns (the presumably male) visitors to the robot expo that
touching her bosom constitutes ‘sexual harassment’.


Will human females be replaced by their humanoid counterparts within
decades? It was not an accident that Actroid Repliee
was named after the French repliquer, to replace. Already the many uses (male)
roboticists imagine for the gynoids include
their employment ‘in upmarket coffee shops, bars, information
booths, office complexes, and museums to greet customers and
to give directions’.32 An advertising poster also suggests the use
of Actroid Repliee as an ambassador, a spiritual leader and a nurse.

After their own children,
elderly Japanese apparently prefer robot caretakers to foreign
ones (see ‘Better than People’, 2005). Robots are perceived by
many Japanese, but especially the elderly and conservative
politicians, as eliminating the sociocultural anxieties provoked
by foreign laborers and caretakers. Limiting the number of
foreigners also reinforces the tenacious ideology of ethnic
homogeneity.

On the one hand, despite a dire labor shortage coupled
with a flat birth rate and rapidly graying population, humanoid
robots are preferred over immigrants as caretakers of children
and elderly persons to assist housewives, ostensibly freeing them
to stay home and have more children (and future workers)
instead of pursuing professional careers (not including elevator
girldom).8 On the other hand, Japanese consumers apparently
want to be greeted at the entrance of elevators and escalators
by human females trained, not as roboticists, but to execute
robotically precise bows and greetings!