Funerals for robodogs? Why not?

ALL THE THINGS YOU OWN WANT TO BE OF USE TO YOU. — MARNI SOUPCOFF

Should newly dead dogs be given full funerals? Some animal lovers would say yes. But it’s hard to imagine many people calling for funerals for robotic dogs.

On Tuesday, NPR’s Scott Neuman reported, without derision, about just that: old robodogs in Japan who received a full Buddhist funeral service last week — complete with incense and chanting — before they were dismantled and their parts used for other things. And I love the story for a few reasons.

First, Bungen Oi — the head priest who conducted the service for the 114 Sony Aibo “dogs” — had a lovely explanation for why insentient robotic pets warranted a devotional ceremony. “All things,” he said, “have a bit of soul.”

Second, Bungen Oi’s words make no sense. They’re weird and unintellectual: a soul is by definition reserved for rational and spiritual beings. At the very least, we expect something with a soul to be a living thing.

And yet the words also ring so completely true. Think about the “blankie” a baby treasures, the Teddy bear a child sleeps with, the special ring a girl inherits from her grandmother, or even the beloved car Neil Young sings about in his song Long May You Run. These are all non-living things. But something about them — some intangible quality — makes them seem worthy of respect, care, and love.

Third, Japanese culture seems to be so much better than Western cultures about recognizing, without shame, this sense of objects being infused with a psyche or a spirit. Or maybe Japanese culture has just been better at hanging on to this recognition alongside modern advances in evidence-based science and technology — accepting the awkward coexistence of the impalpably spiritual and the mechanically material without too many heads exploding.

I mean, we’re not talking here about recognizing some soul in an antique handmade sake cup (though that happens, too); we’re talking about recognizing spirit in a mass-marketed electronic entertainment device that makes use of the latest in artificial intelligence and can connect to Wi-Fi. That’s not something I can imagine happening in North America.

Now it is asking for trouble these days to generalize about cultures, particularly cultures other than one’s own.

Even more dangerous is engaging in such generalizations without having layers of experience and study of the culture in question. So, let me insert here that I’m neither a Japanophile, nor a Japanologist, and therefore probably not qualified to muse on Japanese anima. (Or anime, for that matter.) Yet I’m going to anyway for several reasons.

First, because I find this graceful blurring of the line between living and non-living beautiful, and if I’ve ascribed it to Japanese culture (and particularly contemporary Japanese culture) in error, then in my mind I’ve rendered an undue compliment rather than an undeserved insult, which seems not so bad.

Second, there are so many things you’re not supposed to talk or write about now, that I think any columnist who followed all the rules would just end up writing banal summaries of their own particular lives. Which I do sometimes. But aim not to do every week.

Third, there are some pretty mainstream contemporary examples of what I’m talking about. But remember that from Tsukumogami (tools that have acquired a spirit in Japanese folklore) to Japanese Zen (a school of Buddhism that focuses less on reason and knowledge than on direct insight, which comes from musing on infuriatingly paradoxical riddles), there are also plenty of old ones. Perhaps the best is Shinto, Japan’s Indigenous religion, which makes no divisions between body and spirit.

The contemporary book I keep thinking of is The LifeChanging Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Has this book changed lives? I don’t know. But it’s certainly been very popular (a best-seller in Japan and Europe, and no slouch in North America), and it is full of variations on the theme that all your stuff has spirit in it.

All the things you own want to be of use to you. Discard every item that does not spark joy; but do so respectfully by thanking it for all it’s done for you before you let it go. Your T-shirts need to breathe.

Fourth and finally, why not? The robodog owners have said it themselves. One letter to the Japan Times read, “I feel relieved to know there will be a prayer for my Aibo.” And seeing or touching the spiritual or immaterial part of a robot is no more difficult than seeing or touching the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being.