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Hatsune Miku, Virtual Machine-Woman

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Japanese Robot Culture

Abstract

This chapter discusses a popular Pygmalion fantasy in the Japanese context, that is, the creation of an ideal woman, by examining the virtual singing performance of Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Miku is software that combines synthesised singing with an illustrated girl character. For its male fans, Hatsune Miku embodies the metonymical aural and visual signs of femininity. Fans within the otaku subculture manipulate and control the figure and its outputs through this software and related packages, which can generate images and music videos featuring the character. As scholars indicate, these productions can actually stimulate sexual arousal for hard-core fans. This chapter explores the darker side of the modernist fantasy of technologised progress by considering the figures of the robot and the woman in terms of themes of control and subjugation within the otaku subculture.

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  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Yuji Sone

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Sone, Y. (2017). Hatsune Miku, Virtual Machine-Woman. In: Japanese Robot Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52527-7_6

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