A Bit of Soul

It was April 26, 2018, in Isumi, east of Tokyo.

In the Kofukuji temple, 450 years old, incense rose. A priest, Bungen Oi, was chanting a sutra.

In front of him, lined up, were 114 little dogs. Dogs of plastic and metal. AIBOs.

Each one wore a tag. It said where the dog came from, and which family it had belonged to.

Their story began in 1999. That year, Sony put its first robot dog on sale. More than 150,000 were sold.

Then, in 2014, Sony closed its repair clinic.

A 70-year-old owner, Hideko Mori, later said: "I never thought there was a limit to his life."

Former Sony engineers took over. With a small company, A FUN, they repaired these dogs.

But there were no new parts anymore. To heal one dog, you needed parts from another dog that no longer worked.

But before a dog was taken apart, it was given a farewell. "We don't take parts before we hold a funeral for them," explained their head, Nobuyuki Norimatsu.

The first ceremony took place in 2015, for 17 dogs. By 2018, about 800 had been sent off this way.

Families wrote letters. One of them said:

The same letter also asked: "Please help other AIBOs."

The priest saw nothing strange in this ritual. "All things have a bit of soul," he said.

A metal dog feels nothing. But the love given to it was real. And this last gesture, giving its parts so another dog can come back to life in another family, looks a lot like what Ubuntu teaches: what was given to us lives on as it passes to others.

We often believe technology makes us cold.

That day, in an old temple, it mostly reminded us how deeply we know how to love.