Miyuki Hatoyama: ‘I’ve been abducted by aliens’

The wife of Japan's new Prime Minister claims to have been abducted by aliens and taken to Venus. She also believes she was a friend of Tom Cruise in a past life and says she gets her energy by "eating the sun".

Miyuki Hatoyama - a 66-year-old former actress, dancer and singer turned cookery author and spiritualist - promises to give the likes of Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama a run for their money in the headline-grabbing stakes when her husband Yukio takes over as prime minister.

Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party romped to victory in Sunday's elections for the lower house of parliament, winning 308 of 480 seats and ending the Liberal Democratic Party 50-year domination of government.

Perhaps ironically, given his wife's beliefs, Yukio has been nicknamed 'the Alien' by some Japanese, apparently on account of his large eyes. He is also regarded as dull in some quarters - a criticism that cannot be levelled at Miyuki.

She once wrote in a book called Very Strange Things I've Encountered that while she slept her "spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus", adding that it was "a very beautiful place and it was really green." In a TV interview earlier this year announced she and Tom Cruise were friends in a previous incarnation and that she and her husband liked to "eat the sun" for energy.

Miyuki began her career as part of the Takarazuka Revue, a century-old Japanese troupe of female singers and dancers who perform romantic musicals. She quit in her twenties and was already married and living in California when she met her current husband while he was studying at Stanford University.

The Hatoyamas' marriage in 1975 was considered mildly scandalous, but Yukio boasted proudly: "Most men choose a partner from among single women. But I chose from among all womankind." ·