I did not look closely at this . . . you are talking about THE Hatoyama. Ms. Prime Minister Hatoyama. Good grief!
(By the way her name is Yukiko -- -ko is a common ending in female names. And Hatoyama means Dove-mountain, and the guy does resemble a dove, or pigeon. And they call him "the alien," perhaps we now know it fits.) Let me just say this about that -- You people need to expand your horizons, and read some humanities as well as science. Read literature, folk tales and anthropology. You will find that people in all countries and in all eras believed in this sort of thing. If Ms. Hatoyama had lived 100 years ago she would not believe she in UFOs or other planets. She would believe instead that she had been abducted by sea turtles and held in a splendid kingdom under the sea, as in the movie "Ponyo" now showing. This has been a Japanese folktale forever, and I am sure thousands of people believed that they themselves experienced it. Or she would believe she was raped by a snake. Or that a badger disguised itself as a teapot, enchanted her, and robbed her. Every child in Japan heard that happens, just as every kid in America used to hear about Jack in the beanstalk. The difference is that people used to believe the stories about badgers were true (maybe not the sea turtles). I personally have been robbed by Japanese badgers, so I understand why people thought this happened. Badgers have an astounding ability to walk right past you, help themselves to your watermelon, and vanish. You spend all afternoon fixing the garden fence and nets, turn you back, and a badger will go through the fence and nets leaving no trace and no watermelon. Their abilities would seem supernatural to anyone inclined to believe in the supernatural, and *most people in most countries even today* are inclined to believe in the supernatural. That is the point I have been trying to make, which people here do not seem to grasp. Folktales were known to everyone in society before there was widespread literacy and later television. People everywhere periodically have waking dreams, or dreams they confuse with reality, and many people suffer from delusions. The content of these dreams and delusions come entirely from their own minds, so they are stereotypical and based on stories people hear from others (or see on television these days). The stories are not original, because most people are not imaginative. The stories all sound the same. There are dozens of variations on the badger stories in Japan, all similar. There are dozens of similar UFO abduction stories today because the people who imagine it happened to them all heard the stories from someone else. Hundreds of years ago nearly everyone, everywhere in Europe and America believed in witches, and sincerely believed they could fly or kill people with voodoo. Millions of people throughout the ages thought that they themselves were witches, and that they had flown. Tens of thousands of people were burned at the stake for doing things that are physically impossible -- things that we know with absolute certainty they could not have done -- and yet in many cases they themselves became convinced they had done them. People also believed in absurd and impossible events such as dead people coming back to life, a woman turning into a pillar of salt and other miracles. Such beliefs were not just prevalent in the past; they were universal. If you did not profess belief in them, they might burn *you* at the stake. Nowadays there is no penalty for not believing in UFOs or Lazarus rising from the dead. But people are nearly as ignorant as they were in 1600 or 1800. Education has hardly budged the general level of knowledge. A large fraction of the population does not know that the earth circles the sun once a year or what causes seasons. Most Americans do not believe in evolution of course, but they also have no idea what a calorie is, or amperage and voltage. Japanese people are only marginally more educated in my experience, based on attending college there and reading their mass media. Most people are incurious and seldom bother to learn things that are of no immediate use to them. So it is not a bit surprising that belief in alien abductions is widespread, and it follows from this that many people believe that they themselves were abducted. It always follows. Whatever mythology or folk-tales happen to be widespread in a given era, you will find people who believe it happened to them. They tell similar stories for the same reason there are dozens of badger stories in Japan. To take another example, people in every little town in Georgia claim that Sherman marched through but decided not to burn the place, because a woman pleaded with him to spare the town, or for some other hackneyed story you can find in any folk history. People in towns hundreds of miles away from Sherman's march believe this. This does not mean that Sherman's armies actually marched through every town and village in Georgia and spared them all. It means that people know nothing and they make stuff up. Great grandma had a fantasy about Sherman. Actually, she was 2 years old at the time and Sherman never came within 100 miles of her town, but she told everyone, and came to believe herself, that she seduced him. Believe it if you want, but I suggest you first consider the vast ocean of nonsense, lies, misunderstandings, ignorance, superstition and misdirection that most people everywhere wallow in. Many people believe in UFOs and magical badgers, undersea kingdoms, healing prayer, raising people from the dead, Divine Emperors descended from the Sun Goddess and much else. Many sincerely believe they have experienced these things. Millions believe such nonsense, probably the majority. However they are all wrong and their beliefs prove only that you cannot depend on people to determine the nature of physical reality. The only meaningful proof of any assertion about the real world is objective, replicated, physical evidence.
