Here’s a passage about industrial robots in Japan from Frederik L. Schodt, Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (JAI. Kindle Edition):
Most statements about religion and robots are inspired by Japan's tradition of animism. Animism is the belief that anything in the natural world—not just living things—can have a conscious life or soul. It exists in Buddhism but is especially strong in Shinto. Shinto is indigenous to Japan, and while over the millennia it has been overlaid with foreign deities, nationalism, and emperor worship, at its core is a form of nature worship and the belief that inanimate objects can be sacred. Mountains, trees, even rocks are worshiped for their kami, or indwelling "spirit," and samurai swords and carpenter's tools have "souls." Gods of local industries, such as rice growing, paper making, ceramics, and weaving, are also still worshiped today. Because of the way Shinto priests are regularly called upon to consecrate buildings and industrial machinery, Shinto itself has been called the "chaplain of much of the industrial and technological enterprise of modern Japan."
When Joseph Engelberger once visited a rural Japanese factory, he witnessed a Shinto ritual consecration of two new Kawasaki-made Uhimates. There were thirty-two employees, and as he recalls it,
"their suits are all cleaned and nice and crisp, and the two robots are standing in place, ready to go to work. In front of them is a Shinto altar, with the vegetables and the fruits and the fish twisted into shape. It's absolutely beautiful. Two Shinto priests are there, banging their sticks and moaning and groaning and making all kinds of different sounds, blessing the robots and blessing the general manager and blessing me, with garlands of flowers around the robots. The general manager then stands up and tells the people, 'I want you to welcome your new fellow workers,' and the two machines go to work and everybody in the place claps."
Animism is present in nearly every society to some extent (Americans give names to hurricanes), but it does seem much closer to the surface in Japan, even outside of a Shinto context. In the introduction to a videotape on children's robot shows, a producer writes that "people not only make friends with each other, but with animals and plants, the wind, rain, mountains, rivers, the sun, and the moon. A doll [robot] in the shape of a human is therefore even more of a friend."
A bit later:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when countless foreign visitors traipsed through showcase automated factories in Japan, they often marveled over what seemed a striking example of animism at work: the practice of naming industrial robots. At Nissan's Zama plant, or at the early Fanuc plants in Hino, outside of Tokyo, employees often took the initiative and bestowed on industrial robots the names of popular singers, actors, and cartoon characters, and sometimes festooned them with photographs or drawings. It was a process widely imitated throughout Japan and later even the West as a means of "softening" the environment.
When writers began groping for reasons to explain Japan's early embrace of industrial robots, this mild example of animism on the shop floor became a convenient basis for some rather outrageous claims. Henry Scott-Stokes, in the article mentioned earlier, took Tokyo psychologist Seiichiro Akiyama's words at face value, quoting him as saying of robots, "We give them names. ... We want to stroke them. We respond to them not as machines, but as close-to-human beings." Akiyama's words thereafter appeared widely in the Western media, giving the impression that the Japanese people had some sort of cosmic connection with industrial robots.
On closer inspection, however, what seemed a spiritual connection may have been partly due to the newness and exotic nature of the machines. According to officials at Kawasaki, the ritual consecration of robots, once common, is now rare. Many of the plants that used to decorate robots with names and photos no longer do so—at the new Fanuc plants near Mount Fuji the robots are naked and nameless, and as a young plant manager says, "We have too many to name now." Furthermore, Japanese workers are no more likely to hug or stroke an industrial robot than American workers are to kiss the radiator of an overheated car engine-like any industrial equipment, robots are dangerous. Even Gensuke Okada, who helped shepherd Kawasaki and Japan into the robot age, declares that his company and others in the early 1970s were certainly not motivated by sentimentality, or even religion or tradition. "Japanese industry" he sternly points out, "is very pragmatic; we just want to do the work faster and better, and if possible, have a little time for leisure."
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This video from Kimono Mom’s YouTube channel has a vivid example of the Japanese attitude toward kami. Moe, the woman’s (two syllable) name, makes videos in which she shows how to prepare some Japanese food item. She’s generally accompanied by her young daughter, Sutan. In this video Sutan accidently spills some rice on the floor (c. 1:38). Moe is very angry with her and explains (c. 2:04), “There is a God in the rice.” A bit later she explains, “There are seven gods in each grain.” Though I’m not at all sure – I don’t speak Japanese, which means I can’t hear it very well either – I think that the word that is being translated as “God” is kami.
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On robots in Japan, you might want to look at The Robot as Subaltern: Tezuka's Mighty Atom.
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