It is easy enough to slot Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of Japan’s new Prime Minister, into one of the twin default pigeonholes that Westerners allot to Japanese. One is the salaryman workaholic who slaves dutifully for 40 years before dropping dead at his desk from overwork. The other is earmarked for freaks and fruitcakes, a gang that embraces everyone from demented game-show contestants to sumo wrestlers the size of dump trucks.
Mrs Hatoyama has spoken of how once “my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus”. She says that she met Tom Cruise in a previous life (“He was Japanese in his past life, and we were together”). She foresees making a movie with him, and winning an Oscar for it. So Mrs Hatoyama, a famous former singer and dancer, could slip cosily into the fruitcake file.
But it would be more intriguing to see her, instead, as one more sign that Japan is growing more comfortable in its own skin; that it may genuinely be turning its back on half a century of staid conservative politics, conducted by blue-suited men in smoky dining rooms where the only women allowed were the polished geisha who poured their beer and giggled at their jokes.
After experimenting with the Elvis-loving Junichiro Koizumi, Japan has a first lady who is unashamedly eccentric and a prime minister who, far from being embarrassed by her, admires his wife’s vivacity. A man, too, who was bold enough to marry a divorc?e in a country where the scions of political dynasties shun any risk of scandal.
Miyuki Hatoyama is feisty and far from the stereotype of the meek politician’s wife. She is an unlikely flagbearer for a more unbuttoned Japan. Rather than snigger, let us applaud her instead.