week ten: manga and the Japanese comics tradition

For this weeks reading, I read the Astro Cat by Osamu Tezuka, this book is actually the story of a shy young manga fan named Tsugio.  A bit of a “bookworm”, Tsugio regularly alters his daily route to and from school in an effort to avoid a confrontation with a local bully nicknamed “Qaddafi”.  However, despite his best efforts, Qaddafi and his gang corner Tusgio, bully him and steal his glasses.  Nearly blind without them, Tsugio flails around picking through garbage in his futile search to find his glasses and eventually stumbles across a box containing a scruffy little kitten.  Returning home with the kitten, Tsugio decides to name him “Atom” after his favorite manga hero. From this book, we could tell that Japenese people love the robot, but in today's world, why is that only Japanese not afraid of the robot but ever other countries dose. The word "robot" first came from a book by Czech author Karel Čapek in 1920. In the story, these robots were happy to serve human masters at first, but eventually gained souls and destroyed humans. Such a plot is even rarer in the Western world: an acute and obedient robot can set off a bloody revolution at any time. From "Space Roaming", "Blade Runner" and "Frankenstein" to "Boss" and "Terminator" in killing robots, it is not difficult to see the fear hidden in people's hearts. We can easily ask questions to Siri or Alexa, but we are always cautious and suspicious of robots. In Japan, robots are a representation of love. This has a deep connection with Japan's historical-cultural roots. "Puppet doll" can be said to be the starting point of Japanese robots. Japanese people 200 years ago used springs, gears and other mechanical devices to make tea and performances a daily entertainment. This is also a good start for people to get along with the robot when they are friendly and close. As generations of Japanese have grown up watching cartoons such as Doraemon, Astro Boy, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Evangelion, robots have become part of the Japanese spiritual world. They even expect that superhero-like robots can come to the real world quickly. The creator of Astro said that under the circumstances at that time, he designed Astro to fight for peace, in order to paint an optimistic technical picture: the friendly role of the robot as a savior can be given in the 1950s The Japanese society, suffering from the destruction of war, brings hope. In addition, combined with the influence of Shintoism and Buddhism, the official state religion of Japan, they believe that everything has spirituality, one grass, one tree, one stone, one house, even a transparent space. These religious backgrounds have allowed Japan to retain many old rituals and emotions. It reflects the Japanese's equal respect for inanimate objects. Robots have no essential difference from other creatures, and humans are not special existences, nor will they assume the role of God. Tezuka Chichi also said: Unlike Westerners, we have no skepticism about robots, and we do not regard them as "dummy". So here you can't see anyone resisting robots, instead of everyone can accept them calmly.