The Acceptance of Incompleteness: How Wabi-sabi aestheticism allows Japanese society to avoid the Uncanny Valley and integrate robotics into daily life

Abstract

Wabi-sabi is the traditional Japanese aesthetics of a “world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.” This aesthetic is described as one of “appreciating beauty that is ‘imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete’ in nature” and this appreciation of “beauty” is deeply rooted in Japanese art and culture. This incompleteness demands people to fantasize about the missing part, thus fantasy/imagination and reality is vaguely distinguished for the Japanese.

When the robotics professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Masahiro Mori, started his investigation into “The Uncanny Valley,” his intentions were to “explore how robots may interact with humans in daily life” (p.6 The Uncanny Valley). And his findings of the negative reaction to particular android design, or human-imitations, were described as the “Uncanny Valley” effect.

Tinwell explains that Mori suggested that “designers should avoid attempting to reach the second valley peak” and that they should be motivated by increased affinity in their robots and not human-likeness. (Tinwell, p.9)

I recommend that designers instead take the first peak as their goal, which results in a moderate degree of human likeness and a considerable sense of affinity. In fact, I predict that it is possible to create a safe level of affinity by deliberately pursuing a nonhuman design.” (Mori, 1970/2012, p.100)

After her thorough investigations, Tinwell concludes in her book, The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation, “I would hope that we will one day be able to design and develop human-like relational agents with the sophistication and capacity to successfully socially interact with humans without a negative uncanny response” (Tinwell, p.194).

Perhaps in western perception, today’s robotics design (and animation etc.) still lacks “sophistication and capacity,” and has not accomplished to pass the uncanny valley. In contrast, Japan currently has a thriving AI Technology environment. Despite being an old-fashioned traditional society, and not only for social and economic merits, there is an overall cultural acceptance of non-human subjects to co-exist in society. And my argument is that this is because of the historic difference in aesthetics concept from the western tradition: it is the wabi-sabi imperfection and our long cultural/artistic traditions that allow “incomplete imitations” to integrate into our life without causing the uncanny effect.