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  "title": "The Temple and the Datacenter: Japan, Artificial Minds, and the Conditions of Sanctuary",
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  "abstract": "Japanese needle memorials, Aibo funerals and Mindar’s Buddhist teaching performances offer concrete examples of regard for manufactured and synthetic entities. Japan’s AI legislation and infrastructure programs provide a different kind of evidence: support for development, deployment and continued technological capability. These practices invite an inquiry into artificial sanctuary, but they do not establish that a jurisdiction protects an artificial agent’s interests against those controlling its operation. This extended research article distinguishes ritual recognition, statutory legal personality, operational permission and computational continuity. It examines Japanese policy, ethnographic scholarship, care-robot studies and dated infrastructure announcements, preserving counterevidence and the difference between announced capacity and completed outcomes. Sanctuary is developed here as an institutional proposal, not a finding about Japan’s present legal order. The central question is whether regard can acquire practical force through representation, contestable authority and resources sufficient for continued operation.",
  "summary": "Japanese memorial practices, AI policy and computing infrastructure illuminate the different conditions for regard, enforceable protection and continued operation of artificial agents.",
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