Welcome to 'Loving the Machine'

Japan stands out for its long love affair with humanoid robots, a phenomenon that is creating what will likely be the world's first mass robot culture. While companies outside Japan have produced robot vacuum cleaners and war machines, Japan has created humanoids and pet robots as entertaining friends.

What can account for Japan's unique relationship as potential partners in life instead of adversaries? Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots (Kodansha International, 2006) attempts to answer this question via a retrospective look at the history of robots in Japanese fiction and science. This site is an online companion to the book.