Profile: Miyuki Hatoyama

Mrs Hatoyama is a regular on the Japanese chat show circuit

Japan's new first lady is something of a Renaissance woman: designer, former actress, cookbook author, television personality - and perhaps most controversially a self-professed space traveller who has visited Venus with aliens.

If that were not enough, she also claims to have met Tom Cruise in a former life, when he was Japanese.

Miyuki Hatoyama, married to Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama since 1975, looks set to break the usually reserved mould of Japanese political wives.

But Mr Hatoyama has not tried to tone down his wife's eccentric ways. He has made no secret of his devotion to her, saying "she is like an energy refuelling base".

'Life composer'

Her life was unusual by Japanese standards even before meeting Yukio in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco in the early 1970s.

Born in 1943 in Shanghai, while the city was under Japanese occupation, she then grew up in the western Japanese city of Kobe.

When the sun is up, I always eat it Miyuki Hatoyama

As a teenager she joined the Takarazuka Revue, a troupe of female singers and dancers who have achieved cult status in Japan for their glitzy interpretations of romantic musicals.

She divorced her restaurateur first husband and married Yukio Hatoyama in the US - a mild scandal for the son of an established political family.

Since then, Mrs Hatoyama has built a career as what she calls a "life composer" - a clothes designer, interior decorator and author of cookbooks including one called Miyuki Hatoyama's Spiritual Food.

She styles her husband's hair and chooses his clothes for public appearances.

She has also become a regular on the chat show circuit, discussing topics ranging from food, to politics to religion.

Profile: Yukio Hatoyama

But as her husband emerged as a clear favourite for the premiership earlier this year, it was her comments on her past lives and travels aboard an alien spaceship that attracted the most attention from the international media.

"While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus," she said in an interview for a book on prominent people entitled Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered, published last year.

"It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green."

On a daytime chat show she revealed that having met Tom Cruise in a past life, she now wanted to make a film with him.

"He was Japanese in his past life, and we were together so when I see him, I will say 'Hi, it's been a long time' and he will immediately understand."

"I will win the Oscar for sure."

Mrs Hatoyama also explained how she "eats the sun" every day, to gain energy.

"When the sun is up, I always eat it... I tear it off and eat if like this," she said on the chat show, joking with the host.

"Yum, yum, yum," she said. "That gives me great power."

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