Japan recently voted on a new prime minister and the lucky man slated to take office on Sept. 16 is Yukio Hatoyama. Hatoyama comes from a very political family — in fact, his grandfather was the founder and first president of the Japan Democratic Party in the 1950s.
Hatoyama is known for being eccentric. His wacky hair and unexpressive face have earned him the nickname “The Alien,” but compared to his wife, Miyuki, he is fairly tame. Mrs. Hatoyama, a former actress and cookbook writer, claims in interviews that she has been abducted by aliens, taken to the planet Venus and met Tom Cruise in a past life when he was Japanese.
I’ll pause here and give you a moment to digest all of that.
Now, I consider myself to be a pretty open-minded person. I don’t give alien-abduction stories much credence, but I wholeheartedly believe there is life on other planets, so being abducted by aliens for scientific analysis is possible. Highly improbable, but possible.
That being said, Mrs. Hatoyama’s story of being taken to the planet Venus is proof that she’s either lying, delusional or very gullible. She described the experience in her book, “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered,” which was published last year. She wrote, “While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place and it was very green.”
Yes, that’s right. The abduction happened while she was asleep one night 20 years ago, but she’s convinced it was not a dream. While you’re trying to wrap your head around that one, I would like to remind you that Venus has so much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere that it represents the worst-case scenario when it comes to the greenhouse effect. The surface temperatures on Venus can get over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Lead melts at about 621 degrees Fahrenheit, so unless the beautiful greenery she saw was something glowing and radioactive, it’s not likely she’s ever been to Venus, with or without her body.
I would love to read this book of hers to find out more about her trip to Venus, but there does not seem to be an English-language edition. I’ve had to settle for trying to imagine a Japanese version of Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Carson of Venus.”
As for her chummy, past-life relationship with a Japanese Tom Cruise, Mrs. Hatoyama says, “I believe he’d get it if I said to him, ‘Long time, no see,’ when we meet.”
Strange as it may sound, this quotation of hers made me second-guess myself when trying to judge her level of sanity. If she were truly mad, she would have picked any other actor in the world and we all would feel sorry for them. The fact that she’s chosen Tom Cruise demonstrates she still has her wits about her. Tom Cruise is such an otherworldly screwball that I not only expect him to greet her like an old friend, but to ask her if she’d like someone to carpool with on her next trip to Venus.
Again, I try to be open-minded. I don’t know much about Japan, so I couldn’t help but wonder if there was just a very strong cultural difference that made Mrs. Hatoyama seem weird to me, as a Westerner.
So, I did what any modern girl would do and nosed around on Twitter.com and Facebook.com to see what Japanese people were saying about the future First Lady of Japan. As it turns out, she has a nickname as interesting as her husband’s. They’re calling her “Mrs. Occult.” It kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I hope they make a movie about her someday, preferably starring Tom Cruise, called, “The Alien, The Last Samurai and Mrs. Occult Go to Venus.” I would pay real money to see that.
– Karen Ingram is a sophomore in English. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.