Word: hatoyamas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With hair that sometimes reveals a shock of white, sometimes goes all black, Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, is striking enough in person. That she is visible at all is a surprise. In Japan, the wives of politicians are often neither seen nor heard. But Miyuki Hatoyama has become something of an international media phenomenon because of remarks in a book she once wrote - and, oh yes, because her husband, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, is assuming the office of Prime Minister after what many are calling one of the most important elections in post-war Japanese history...
Already unconventional with her outspokenness, Miyuki Hatoyama can claim a background uncommon for most Japanese women: she was born abroad and has lived overseas for more than 10 years in her adulthood, she has had more than one career, and she is in her second marriage. Born in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, she returned when she was one year old and grew up in Kobe. By 18, under the name Miyuki Waka, she was acting with the all-female Takarazuka Theater troupe, a traditional Japanese revue with a style somewhere between a glitzy Las Vegas spectacle and a Pyongyang parade...
After moving to the U.S. with her first marriage, she was working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco when she met Yukio Hatoyama, who is a veritable Japanese Kennedy (his grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, was Prime Minister and his father served as Foreign Minister). At the time, Hatoyama was getting his graduate degree in engineering at Stanford University. In a recent interview in the weekly Japanese magazine Aera, Miyuki said Hatoyama was surprised by his own passionate side when he met her; she said that he stayed on in America to do his Ph D. because of her. After...
...interview with Aera, she recalled the time when Hatoyama first won public office, in 1986 to represent a constituency in the northern island of Hokkaido: "People seemed surprised to see flashy clothes and shoes, but I don't like to change myself." Indeed, she has her own flair when it comes to fashion: from a jacket made with her husband's old ties cut and sewn at the cuffs and hemline; to a hemp sackskirt of her own design. When she and her husband cast their votes on Aug. 26, he wore a suit, she wore jeans. (See the fashion...
...sure if Mr. Hatoyama can be a strong leader. But let's give him a chance, and we'll see how he does." - Tomio Ogura, a 72-year-old Japanese retiree...