Japanese sports fans have stoically watched Honda pull out of Formula One; its housewives have quietly endured cutbacks on sushi and karaoke and have been forced to suffer repeats of television soap operas; even the toiling salaryman is making do without his usual postwork beer.

Last night, however – to vocal national dismay – Japan suffered perhaps the most crushing indignity of its economic meltdown: one of its foremost robot-makers went bust.

It was a deep wound for a society where humanoid robots cling tightly to the cultural core. The bankrupted company, Systec Akazawa, was no run-of-the-mill robot-maker but the creator of Plen, an adored 23cm-high bipedal automaton with numerous international sporting victories to his name.

The astonishing profile of the diminutive robot arises from his cutting-edge powers of balance: he can rollerskate, dance, skateboard and – if provided with a miniature broom – cheerfully clean up a messy desk.

The greatest talent of Plen, however, is his ability to tackle, dribble and shoot to world-class standards. To universal misery, his makers have gone bankrupt just as their versatile son was preparing to defend, for an extraordinary fifth year, Team Osaka’s coveted title in the RoboCup international robotic football competition. The success of Plen stood out in a country where many of the largest industrial and academic institutions tout the output of their robotics divisions proudly. Toyota, despite dismissing many thousands of humans when its global business turns sour, retains the laboratory where it perfects a trumpet-playing automaton.

The demise of Systec Akazawa does not only rob Japan of an international star, but of a vital service to robot fans and owners throughout the country. Three years ago the robot-obsessed president of the company, Yohei Akazawa, decided that the time was ripe to open the first robot clinic in Japan: a repair shop for ordinary Japanese whose beloved robots develop issues with their solenoids or semi-conductors.

“Our door is open,” Mr Akazawa once said, “to all those who want to own robots but are not confident enough to keep them in good condition.”

As well as heralding the possible end of Plen’s career in robotic football, the collapse of Systec Akazawa sounds an alarm for swathes of corporate Japan. Robotics were a sideline for a company that was fundamentally a specialist manufacturer of precision machinery and equipment.

The headline woes of the biggest Japanese corporate giants – Nissan, Canon and Panasonic – have overshadowed what many analysts fear will quickly become a much wider collapse of the “food chain” of parts companies and component makers which kept the Japanese manufacturing system alive.

Systec found its order book emptied by the credit crunch and industrial downturn, and collapsed under debts amounting to about £5 million.

Fears that the downturn will destroy hundreds of small Japanese manufacturers are visible across the country. A record 99.39 million people went to shrines on the first three days of the new year: the surge in visitors compared with previous years, said police who were marshalling the queues, arose from people praying for economic recovery.

Helping humans

Army robot The Packbot has been used by US forces in Iraq to detect explosive vapours emanating from weapons such as improvised explosive devices

Dog robot The Sony AIBO talks, sings and reminds people of tasks that must not be forgotten. Sony has sold approximately 100,000 of its toylike robots

Nurse robot RI-MAN is created to care for the elderly. With a human form, it can carry people as well as analyse odours

Sources: Times archives

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