Gakutensoku

thumb|Makoto Nishimura (left of Gakutensoku) and one of his assistants, Bōji Nagao, pose with the robot.

Gakutensoku (學天則, Japanese for "learning from the laws of nature"), the first robot to be built in the East, was created in Osaka in the late 1920s. The robot was designed and manufactured by biologist Makoto Nishimura (1883–1956, father of actor Kō Nishimura). Nishimura had served as a professor at Hokkaido Imperial University, studied Marimo and was an editorial adviser to the Osaka Mainichi newspaper (now the Mainichi Shimbun).