{"id":15827,"date":"2018-12-15T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T04:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak?p=15827"},"modified":"2019-03-22T21:36:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T16:06:49","slug":"japanese-man-marries-anime-character-hologram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/japanese-man-marries-anime-character-hologram\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy in Love? The Japanese Man &#8216;Married&#8217; to a Hologram"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"preParagraph\">TOKYO: Akihiko Kondo&#8217;s mother refused an invitation to her only son&#8217;s wedding in Tokyo this month, but perhaps that isn&#8217;t such a surprise: he was marrying a hologram.<\/p>\n<p>None of Akihiko Kondo&#8217;s relatives attended his wedding to a <span id=\"vocab_20381\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">hologram<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For mother, it wasn&#8217;t something to celebrate,&#8221; said the 35-year-old, whose <span id=\"vocab_1876\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">&#8220;bride&#8221;<\/span><\/span> is a <span id=\"vocab_17078\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">virtual reality<\/span><\/span> singer named Hatsune Miku.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pre-ads\">Kondo spent 2 million yen (580,000 baht) on his wedding at a Tokyo hall.<\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-in-read-1\" class=\"boomboxSize3 active\" data-google-query-id=\"CJCamr3Vn98CFViJaAod7AICDA\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/2776261\/InRead_BP_0__container__\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/2776261\/InRead_BP_0\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_\/2776261\/InRead_BP_0\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-google-container-id=\"5\" data-load-complete=\"true\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Around 40 guests watched as he tied the knot with Miku, present in the form of a cat-sized stuffed <span id=\"vocab_22156\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">doll<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never <span id=\"vocab_2543\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">cheated<\/span><\/span> on her, I&#8217;ve always been in love with Miku-san,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking about her every day,&#8221; he told AFP a week after the wedding.<\/p>\n<p>Since March, Kondo has been living with a moving, talking <span id=\"vocab_20381\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">hologram<\/span><\/span> of Miku that <span id=\"vocab_6355\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">floats<\/span><\/span> in a US$2,800 (93,000 baht) desktop device.<\/p>\n<p>He considers himself an ordinary married man &#8212; his <span id=\"vocab_24051\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">holographic<\/span><\/span> wife wakes him up each morning and sends him off to his job as an administrator at a school.<\/p>\n<p>In the evening, when he tells her by cellphone that he&#8217;s coming home, she turns on the lights. Later, she tells him when it&#8217;s time to go to bed.<\/p>\n<p>He sleeps alongside the <span id=\"vocab_22156\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">doll<\/span><\/span> version of her that attended the wedding, complete with a wedding ring that fits around her left <span id=\"vocab_17481\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">wrist<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Kondo&#8217;s marriage might not have any legal standing, but Gatebox, the company that produces the <span id=\"vocab_20381\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">hologram<\/span><\/span> device featuring Miku, has issued a &#8220;marriage certificate&#8221;, which certifies that a human and a virtual character have wed &#8220;beyond dimensions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Kondo&#8217;s path to Miku came after difficult <span id=\"vocab_5393\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">encounters<\/span><\/span> with women as an anime-mad teenager.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Miku-san is the woman I love a lot and also the one who saved me,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>And while Kondo says he is happy to be friends with a &#8220;3D woman&#8221;, he has no interest in romance with one, no matter how much his mother pushes for it.<\/p>\n<p>Even in a country obsessed with anime, Kondo&#8217;s wedding shocked many. But he wants to be recognised as a &#8220;sexual minority&#8221; who can&#8217;t imagine dating a <span id=\"vocab_24376\" class=\"LearningWord\"><span class=\"learning-vocabulary\">flesh-and-blood<\/span><\/span>woman.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s simply not right, it&#8217;s as if you were trying to talk a gay man into dating a woman, or a lesbian into a relationship with a man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Diversity in society has been long called for,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I believe we must consider all kinds of love and all kinds of happiness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bangkokpost.com\/learning\/advanced\/1574554\/japanese-man-marries-hologram\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even in a country obsessed with anime, Kondo&#8217;s wedding shocked many. But he wants to be recognised as a &#8220;sexual minority&#8221; who can&#8217;t imagine dating a flesh-and-blood woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":15877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,1,1882],"tags":[1904,1903,637,296,1902,1665,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-15827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog-roll","8":"category-categories","9":"category-popular-culture-and-sexuality","10":"tag-anime","11":"tag-hologram","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-marriage","14":"tag-otaku","15":"tag-popular-culture","16":"tag-sexualities"},"menu_order":641,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15827"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15878,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827\/revisions\/15878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}