Tobias Sylvester
A 35-year-old school administrator identified as Akihiko Kondo from Japan has ‘married’ the hologram of a virtual reality pop star named Hatsune Miku. For mother, it wasn’t something to celebrate so she refused an invitation to attend the ceremony apparently over its weirdness.
In fact, none of Kondo’s relatives attended his wedding to Miku but that didn’t stop him from spending two million yen ($17,600) on a formal ceremony at a Tokyo hall.
Miku, who is characterized as a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise pigtails and giant saucer-shaped eyes is a bit of a phenomenon in Japan.
She’s actually a computer program and has had chart-topping songs and sell-out concerts where she appears as a hologram.
But for Akihiko Kondo, the relationship is a little more personal.
‘I’m in love with the whole concept of Hatsune Miku but I got married to the Miku of my house,’ he said.
“I’ve been thinking about her every day,” he told AFP a week after the wedding.
They’ve been living together since March. Kondo has been living with a moving, talking hologram of Miku that floats in a $2,800 desktop device.
‘There must be some people who can’t come forward and say they want to hold a wedding. I want to give them a supportive push.’
‘It’s simply not right, it’s as if you were trying to talk a gay man into dating a woman, or a lesbian into a relationship with a man.’‘Diversity in society has been long called for,’ he added.‘It won’t necessarily make you happy to be bound to the ‘template’ of happiness in which a man and woman marry and bear children.’‘I believe we must consider all kinds of love and all kinds of happiness.’
