We are the Miyuki Hatoyama Fan Club

Until last week’s general election you could be forgiven for characterising Japanese political life as dull.

But Miyuki Hatoyama, whose husband Yukio will become Japan’s first Democratic Prime Minister later this month, may well be the character to inject a little colour into it.

In a book she wrote last year entitled 私が出あった世にも不思議な出来事 (‘Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered’), she is quoted as saying -

While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus. It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green.

On a TV talk show earlier this year, she first led the interviewer up the garden path with a tangential story about Tom Cruise being Japanese in a previous life (she knew because she had been there too, it seems), before announcing -

“I also eat the sun,” she said, looking up with her eyes closed, raising her arms high as if she was tearing pieces off an imaginary sun. “Like this, yum, yum, yum. It gives me enormous energy. My husband has recently started doing that too.”

In a country that has got used to Prime Ministers wearing out after a year or so, I hope you stick around for a long time, Miyuki, you brighten the place up.