Changing Imaginations of AI/Robots in Japan: Situating AI in/of Tezuka in Japanese Techno-Social History, 1920–2020

Abstract It is well known that Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy influenced not only popular culture but also the industrial and academic interest in robotics. In contrast, less attention is paid to artificial intelligence ( AI ) in Tezuka’s works. Tezuka gives AI a starkly different role and personality from robots, depicting it negatively and not seeing the humanity in AI characters. Despite this, more than 30 years after his death, a posthumous work released in 2020 titled Phaedo was deemed a ‘new work by Tezuka Osamu’. How did this happen? This article traces the history of the concept of robots and AI in Japan, contextualizes Tezuka’s representation of robots and AI and argues that the technological breakthrough since Tezuka’s death has successfully distanced in the contemporary imagination of AI from how Tezuka conceptualized it.