



While in 1980, only one in 50 men had never married by the age of 50, that figure is now one in four. In Japan, that wouldn't be entirely unusual nowadays. 'Girls would say "Drop dead, creepy otaku!",' he recalled, using a Japanese term for geeks that can carry a negative connotation.Īs he got older, he says a woman at a previous workplace bullied him into a nervous breakdown and he became determined never to marry. Mr Kondo's path to Miku came after difficult encounters with women as an anime-mad teenager. I want to give them a supportive push,' he said. 'There must be some people who can't come forward and say they want to hold a wedding. Mr Kondo wasn't alone either - he said Gatebox issued more than 3,700 certificates for 'cross-dimension' marriages. Gatebox, the company that produced the hologram device featuring Miku, issued a 'marriage certificate', which certified that a human and a virtual character wed 'beyond dimensions'. Mr Kondo's marriage did not have any legal standing, but that didn't bother him. He slept alongside the doll version of her that attended the wedding, complete with a wedding ring that fit around her left wrist
