Meet Karakuri Ningyō, Japan's First Robot

“Karakuri ningyō” roughly translates as “Mechanism Dolls” (which is a decent Industrial rock band name) though the word “karakuri” can also mean “to take a person by surprise.” Karakuri ningyō (or just “Karakuri” for short) were the real-life Pinocchios of late 17th century Japan. The dolls were made for entertainment, and could be seen in theaters and religious festivals. Like modern robotics, the methods of Karakuri were developed by synthesizing engineering techniques from all over, mainly developments in Chinese and Western clockwork. The dolls operate using nothing but wood, metal and some simple physics.

As the Karakuri maker in the video below says, the dolls have an eerie vitality to them even though they perform such simple tasks. They aren’t real enough to cause any uncanny valley problems, but their simplicity gives them a sort of stoic humanity.

Humans have been intrigued by robots for millennia. Early forms of automata were engineered in Ancient Greece, Egypt, and China, and Leonardo even had a blueprint for a full-size humanoid robot. And robots, especially humanoid ones, continue to be a central theme in technology and popular culture. The roots of human interest in robots run deep, implying some interesting psychology. Are we so drawn to robots merely for the same reasons we are drawn to other people, with the added novelty of artificiality? Or are robots just the next big step in tool-making technology, extending our prehistoric penchant for efficiency in hunting and agriculture to the realms of personal service and social comfort? Either way, we are only going to see more and more robots, and robots will only be more and more busy. I wonder if future service bots will envy the last remaining Karakuri living lives (excuse the phrase) of graceful repetition rather than exhaustive robot slave labor.

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