Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Think of her as Japan’s answer to Nancy Reagan.

First-lady-in-waiting Miyuki Hatoyama isn’t known to be consulting an astrologer to help plan her husband’s schedule, as Reagan did in the 1980s. Yet Hatoyama’s otherworldly musings have become the unlikely center of focus as her spouse prepares to run Asia’s biggest economy.

It’s an incredible feat for a Japanese first lady to garner headlines beyond her baking or flower-arranging skills. Hatoyama is emerging as a bizarrely eclectic foil to her often bland husband, Yukio. She claims, among other things, to have been abducted by aliens, visited Venus and known Tom Cruise in a past life, when the actor was Japanese.

And Yukio Hatoyama hasn’t even taken office, following his party’s Aug. 31 election victory. It now seems celestially fitting that detractors have long called him “The Alien,” a dig directed as much at his prominent eyes as his head-in-the- stars comments.

Let’s accentuate the positive. Here are three reasons to applaud the accession of an alien and his space-traveling bride to the premiership.

1. Fresh thinking. Forget thinking out of the box. These folks may be thinking out of the galaxy. How tired the outgoing Liberal Democratic Party became can been seen in its “zombie candidates.”

Change is Good

You see, voters fired LDP heavyweights such as Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano and ex-Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura last week. That’s democracy, right? Wrong. Yosano, Machimura and more than 50 other election losers were tossed parliamentary lifelines and will be kept around. Talk about kissing off voters.

The great thing about Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan taking over is, presumably, a break from such dodgy tactics. The DPJ wants to take on the nameless, faceless and change-averse bureaucrats holding back the nation’s 126 million people. It wants to bolster Japan’s social safety net and help households prepare for a changing global economy.

Doing that really may take an alien of sorts. It will require someone from another intellectual universe -- or at least someone removed from the orbit of Nagatacho, Japan’s answer to Capitol Hill. It’s not clear Yukio Hatoyama, as the grandson of a prime minister, is that leader. Still, Japan could hardly do worse than the policies championed by the LDP.

Space Talk

All this talk about space is fitting, as Japan is on the precipice of a financial black hole. Its out-of-this-world public debt is approaching 200 percent of gross domestic product. The DPJ needs to boldly go in a new direction.

2. This couple won’t be boring. The idea that Hatoyama will be a humdrum prime minister is under rapid revision. That will happen when your spiritualist, former-actress wife writes books with titles like “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered” and claims to “eat the sun” for breakfast.

Miyuki also is a divorcee, a status few women in Japan talk about readily. She does. In a recent book, she recounts that her first husband wasn’t receptive to hearing about her Venusian journey aboard a UFO. Yukio, her second husband, “has a different way of thinking and would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great,’” she wrote.

Quite a Departure

It’s quite a departure for Japanese, many of whom couldn’t name the last couple of first ladies if their lives depended on it. I’d wager that most Japanese already know who Miyuki is and what she thinks -- both about our planet and beyond.

Not to worry about the eccentricity factor. Former U.S. first lady Reagan is widely revered even after disclosures she relied on her astrologer to help protect President Ronald Reagan after a 1981 assassination attempt. Japanese may be more than willing to overlook Miyuki’s quirkiness. At a minimum, she’ll challenge the tired cliche of the subservient Japanese housewife.

3. New growth. Who knows? Miyuki’s extraterrestrial musings might give a boost to two sci-fi- and fantasy-influenced industries: anime and robots. Japan’s economy is intensely fad- driven, and anything that stimulates innovation and job creation can’t be all that bad.

Every now and then, a new toy, pocketbook or electronic gadget that everyone must have emerges. Marrying that dynamic with Japan’s efforts to promote so-called cultural exports might pay huge dividends.

Robot Boom

Tapping icons from Hello Kitty to Pokemon to “manga” comic books to video games to fashion designers has been a growing priority. Might Miyuki’s interplanetary tales add a cosmic angle and breathe new life into any number of Japanese cultural genres?

Robots, perhaps. Industrial robots are already big business in Japan. Household robots are a fast-growing niche amid efforts to offset a dwindling workforce. An aversion to increased immigration is putting the onus on technology. Robots are often associated with sci-fi, and Miyuki could inadvertently shine a spotlight on their commercial potential.

And if Yukio Hatoyama’s tenure as prime minister is a short one, Miyuki may have a future with Richard Branson’s commercial space venture, Virgin Galactic Ltd. The U.K. billionaire may need a quirky spokesman in Asia.

Not that the multimillionaire Hatoyamas need the money. It’s just that with them and what the media might expect, the possibilities really are out of this world.

(William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: William Pesek in Tokyo at wpesek@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 6, 2009 13:00 EDT