A new trend in Japan: marriages with virtual characters
Apparently marrying robots
and holograms is a new reality. Just how many people have married a robot or
hologram? Not enough people have openly married a robot or hologram to gather
exact data, but according to some technology experts, technology marriages are
soon going to be a normal part of our lives.
Japanese man marries anime hologram of Hatsune Miku
One Japanese man has taken
the plunge into robot-human partnership. Akihiko Kondo, from Tokyo, has married
his Gate box Virtual Robot. The Gate box Virtual Robot was designed to be a
companion for people who want to give up on dating, but do not want to be
lonely. Gate box can text Kondo while he is at work, turns on lights when he is
coming home, brush her teeth with him, carry on a conversation and more.
Akihiko Kondo wakes up every day to the sound of his wife's Miku voice. She calls him from across the room in her high-pitched, girlish,
sing-song voice. She dances and swirls around, urging him to get out of bed.
Why married with virtual characters:
In Asia, Japan and
South Korea, people are quite obsessed about this high salary and this tendency
is not getting any weaker, it's getting stronger.
Japanese
women tend not to believe in eternal love, but they can trust money.
This
sounds like a sweeping statement - one that comes close to blaming a generation
of women for the problem - but Yamada says it's a conclusion he has drawn after
extensive surveys.
In
Japan working life is very, very hard and there is still a lot of sexual
discrimination. Working hours are very long and there's lots of stress.
Also,
the burden of childcare is still firmly on the mother. Long hours, high-stress
workplaces and long commutes make life difficult for working mothers. The
easier option is to quit - but that's not possible unless your partner earns a
certain amount of money.
At
the same time there's a dwindling pool of well-paid men: as Japan's economy
stagnates, wages are falling.
The
result is an increasing number of young women who choose not to date
and an increasing number of young men who know enough not to bother trying.
By: Khadheeja Zuyyina (ACFS-1)
