Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, faces formidable foreign policy challenges in dealing with an expansionist China, a nuclear armed North Korea and a sinister Russia. But he need have no concerns about establishing friendly relations with the planet Venus — his own wife is a friend of the Venusians, having travelled there in a UFO in the 1970s.

The distinctions of Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, do not end there. As well as being a musical actress, cookery writer, clothes maker and television personality, she also says that she knew the actor Tom Cruise in a past life when he was incarnated as a Japanese.

To his credit, Mr Hatoyama, who will formally become Prime Minister in a fortnight after a landslide election victory last Sunday, does not appear in the least embarrassed by his wife’s eccentricities, and nor do his fellow citizens. She falls into the category of public figure known as “tarento”, or “talent” — televisual artists or entertainers who are expected and encouraged to be more flamboyant and unpredictable than the rest of us.

Mrs Hatoyama began her career in a Japanese institution — the Takarazuka Revue, a troupe of female singers and dancers who perform romantic musicals to packed audiences of middle-aged Japanese women. She was living in California, as the wife of a Japanese restaurateur, when she met the young Mr Hatoyama, who was studying engineering at Stanford University. Their marriage in the US, after her divorce, was mildly scandalous for the scion of a political family such as Mr Hatoyama. “Most men choose a partner from among single women,” as he said proudly. “But I chose from among all womankind.”

Since then she has established herself as a lifestyle consultant, or “life composer”, and the author of several books, including Miyuki Hatoyama’s Spiritual Food and Miyuki Hatoyama’s Have a Nice Time. It was in a book of interviews with prominent people, entitled Most Bizarre Things I’ve Encountered, that she revealed her extraterrestrial jaunt, which occurred during her first marriage. “While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus,” she said. “It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green.”

Since it became likely, earlier this year, that Mr Hatoyama and his Democratic Party of Japan were likely to form the next government, she has been extensively interviewed on the daytime “wide shows” aimed at Japanese housewives. It was during one of these that she spoke of her past-life friendship with Cruise and her ambition 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,” she said. “I will win the Oscar for sure. About seven years ago my husband Yukio said to me, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s a nice dream . . .’ but these days, he encourages me and he sits at his computer translating the script into English even though he is tired after work.”

She also described how she “eats the sun” every morning. She closed her eyes and mimed the act of removing pieces from the sky. “Yum, yum, yum,” she said, placing the imaginary solar morsels in her mouth. “I get energy from it. My husband also does this.”

Times Recommends

• New York has lost its edge
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found