Even today in the performing arts in Japan, gaijin (lit. "aliens"), as foreigners are called, are still often presented like something to be gawped at in a Victorian freak show.
It was a bit like that when a new play called "Sayonara (Goodbye)" premiered with a special press performance in Tokyo in 2010. But the questions whispered among the audience of critics there were: "Wait a minute — which one's the android?" and "Who is real?"
But if they thought it was strange to be watching a foreign actress playing opposite a seated robot whose expressions and skin tones made "her" barely distinguishable from a real person, they didn't know the half of how unusual the human component of that duo was as she acted out, in flawless Japanese, the role of a dying young woman having a sensitive and philosophical discussion about death with a Geminoid F android created in 2010 by Osaka University's pioneering Hiroshi Ishiguro.