http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/frederik schodt http://io9.com/tag/frederik schodt

Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. In the spring of 1988, Japanese publisher Kodansha released a revealing English-language book titled Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia. The book predicted a new era when humanoid robots would dominate Japanese society in the same way that industrial robots were then dominating behind-the-scenes manufacturing in the country. It was a topic that nobody in the Western world knew much about at all. The author, Frederik L. Schodt, was a freelance interpreter from Washington, DC who lived in Japan as a kid and traveled extensively between the Japan and the US—often as a private interpreter for Tezuka Osamu, the God of manga (Japanese comic books). And he predicted a social trend that was nearly beyond comprehension in the 1980s. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=383872&view=rss&microfeed=true