This essay takes 20th and 21st century Japan as a site for investigating the relationship between claims of culture and the interplay between social robots and social institutions. By historicising the state, the roboticists and the consumer body’s collective effort to establish unique cultural lineages of social robots based on positive human-non-human relationships, anthropological critique has demonstrated that rather than a self-contained entity or an objective fact, culture is best seen as interpretations that substantiate the multitude of social actions. Applying this multitude to observing social robot development provides tools for capturing and understanding the mutual shaping of social robots and institutions. Finally, this essay presents ethnographic examples of social robots’ implementation in care facilities and public areas to suggest how these interpretative spaces can challenge normative assumptions of the human and provide orientations for social robot design.