I'm Japanese, and this is the first I've heard of Gakutensoku. If you asked people in Japan for an old Japanese "robot", I think most would come up with this tea-carrying karakuri doll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_puppet
That one predates the word "robot" entirely. The design is documented in a 1796 book called "Karakuri Zui", so Edo period, shoguns still in charge.
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I'm Japanese, and this is the first I've heard of Gakutensoku. If you asked people in Japan for an old Japanese "robot", I think most would come up with this tea-carrying karakuri doll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_puppet
That one predates the word "robot" entirely. The design is documented in a 1796 book called "Karakuri Zui", so Edo period, shoguns still in charge.
Yeah, I was about to object that this is essentially a large automaton of which there are tons of earlier examples from Japan.