Japanese singer Hamasaki marries actor Schwarz

Ayumi Hamasaki will marry Australian actor Manuel Schwarz, her agency announced on Jan. 1. Kyodo News photo

TOKYO (Kyodo) – Japanese pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki married U.S-based Austrian actor Manuel Schwarz on Jan. 1 in a church ceremony in the United States, her office said Jan. 2.

Hamasaki, 32, and Schwarz, 30, met last August in Los Angeles when she made a promotional video for her song “Virgin Road,” in which he played her bridegroom, the office said earlier.

Schwarz lives in Los Angeles.

On New Year’s eve, Hamasaki appeared in the annual Red and White Year-end Song Festival on NHK, one of the most widely watched TV shows in Japan. Clad in a white wedding gown with a hugely extended train, she sang “Virgin Road.”

The latest Red and White, or Kohaku, song festival drew an audience rate of 35.7 percent in the first section, in which Hamasaki sang, in the Kanto area centering on Tokyo, down 1.4 percentage point from a year earlier, according to rating service company Video Research Ltd.