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Paper short abstract

How will we work if offices, factory floors, and service industry move to the metaverse? This paper maps conceptual rifts between different types of futuristic imagination – such as imaginaries, narratives, and visions – onto political, corporate, and literary depictions of the metaverse cyberworkplace.

Paper long abstract

Following the pandemic-induced rise of teleworking, workplace settings have become central to metaverse imaginaries, frequently associated with both “magical zoom meetings” (Banis, 2021) in cartoon conference rooms and 'digital twins' replicating physical factory floors. In Japan, this is driven by a corporate-bureaucratic nexus: NTT markets its “Mirza” augmented reality glasses as a catalyst for “worker transformation” (hataraku hito ni henkaku o), Sōmushō (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) recently published 'Guidelines for Metaverse Implementation' focusing on corporate utility, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) is funding a large-scale project on worker wellbeing in the “metaverse office.”

This situates metaverse labor within a sprawling landscape of futuristic imaginations, analyzed through theoretical frameworks like sociotechnical imaginaries, narratives, and expectations. First, my paper maps this conceptual landscape using the case of metaverse labor between real and virtual environments.

In the second part of my paper, I contrast these imaginations from Japan’s public and private sectors with adjacent speculative fiction. While metaverse work scenarios depicted in Japanese Sci-Fi focus on thrilling applications in high-stakes military dystopias, depictions of mundane waged labor in the metaverse are much rarer. I discuss Hirano Keiichirō’s novel Honshin (2021) as one example of the latter. The novel, more than its 2024 cinematic adaptation, presents a starkly dystopian critique of Japan’s future service sector. It envisions the embodiment provided by metaverse platforms, avatars, and wearable technology as facilitators of exploitative, highly intrusive labor configurations.

In sum, the paper maps the conceptual spectrum of futuristic imaginations onto official imaginaries shaping Japanese public policy and corporate strategy, contrasting this with an alternative literary exploration of 'Working the Metaverse'. It critically interrogates the mutual constitution of fiction and futuristic imagination, which may coalesce into Cool Japan 2.0 technopolitics, but may also – as the novel Honshin illustrates – read dominant imaginations against the grain.

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Paper short abstract

The proposed project investigates Toyota’s Woven City smart city as a site of data extraction and knowledge production, situated within the sociotechnical imaginaries articulated in Toyota’s PR discourse and the Japanese government’s agenda for a “super-smart” Society 5.0.

Paper long abstract

In 2016, the Japanese government, in cooperation with Keidanren, Japan’s big business lobby group, presented a hyperbolic vision for a radical transformation of Japan into a “super-smart”, “ideal” society, in which physical space and simulated cyberspace become one and in which individuals are constantly connected, and their data extracted as a crucial resource. The aim of this vision is to overcome Japan’s economic stagnation, a wide range of societal and demographic issues, as well as global challenges such as climate change. While Society 5.0 is rather a vision rather than a coherent set of technology policy, Japanese smart city projects are the very first sites of experimentation with Society 5.0 connectedness, data extraction, and knowledge production. Woven City was inaugurated as recently as September 2025 and is a corporate smart-city project in Shizuoka prefecture operated by Toyota. From its inception, the city’s population is preconfigured into two classes: the “inventors” – primarily Toyota engineers and scientists – and so-called “weavers” who test the inventors’ products and services while their data are extracted. This clear-cut societal bifurcation is similar to the Taylorist separation of “engineers” and “operators” in the early twentieth century. Unlike other corporate smart cities, data extraction in Woven City does not primarily serve the operation of the city itself but rather the development of products and services for the world market, most notably Toyota vehicles. As a result, knowledge production in Woven City follows a strictly techno-solutionist and data-driven rationale. As a preliminary analysis of Toyota PR material indicates, citizenship in Woven City is markedly underdeveloped and remains unaddressed almost entirely. While foregrounding sustainability, diversity and “human-centered” “co-creation”, inhabitants are subjected to technocratic rule, an approach that closely mirrors the government’s Society 5.0 discourse. This presentation highlights first results of a multimodal discourse analysis of Toyota PR material to investigate how sociotechnical and corporate imaginaries are mobilized to legitimize technocratic forms of knowledge production and to gloss over several contradictions pertaining to sustainability, diversity, and human-centeredness.

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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes how everyday automation is co-constructed by stakeholders and experienced by users in Japan. Applying Social Practice Theory, the paper shows how misalignment between policy, academia, and industry shapes fragmented automation practices affecting customers and retail employees.

Paper long abstract

As ageing societies are increasingly faced with workforce shortages and questions of digital inclusion or technological adaptation, everyday automation has become a central feature of social and economic life, also in Japan. Technologies such as self-checkout machines are now widely embedded in retail spaces and shape how people shop, work, and interact. While often framed as tools of efficiency and convenience, these systems also raise questions about accessibility, digital competence, and changing forms of social interaction.

This paper examines how everyday automation is experienced, interpreted, and negotiated by different social actors in Japan. It draws on qualitative data from expert interviews with policymakers, academics, and industry representatives, providing insight into the institutional logics shaping the design and governance processes of automation. Additionally, focus group interviews with users from different generations as well as interviews with retail employees examine the actual experience of such technology. Observations conducted in supermarkets further contextualize these perspectives by capturing everyday interactions between customers, employees, and machines.

The analysis is guided by Social Practice Theory, which conceptualizes automation not as an isolated technology but as a practice constituted through the interplay of materials (self-checkout machines), competences (digital skills and adaptation), and meanings (e.g. efficiency, independence, or social connection). This framework allows for a comparative examination of how automation is co-constructed by institutional domains and how it is embedded in users’ everyday routines. The findings reveal a significant misalignment between policymakers, academic experts, and industry actors in how everyday automation is understood and implemented. These discrepancies result in fragmented implementation, which becomes visible in the daily lives of both customers and retail employees.

By foregrounding everyday practices and institutional dynamics, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on automation and social shifts in Japan. It highlights how misalignment across policy, academia, and industry shapes the lived realities of automation and underscores the need for more socially attuned and coordinated approaches to technological implementation in Japan.