Profile: Yukio Hatoyama

Mr Hatoyama says he is ready for a "revolutionary election"

At first glance, Yukio Hatoyama is not unlike the man he has just ousted.

Both he and his predecessor Taro Aso come from the political and industrial elite.

Both had a prime minister for a grandfather.

Mr Hatoyama's family founded tyre giant Bridgestone, Mr Aso's owned a leading mining company.

Both men graduated from an elite university and spent time studying in the US, before joining the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

But there their paths diverged. While Mr Aso climbed the LDP ranks, Mr Hatoyama left to form a new party.

Just a year after Mr Aso became prime minister, he suffered a convincing election defeat at the hands of Mr Hatoyama and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - only the second time the LDP had been beaten since World War II.

And now the quiet, unassuming Mr Hatoyama has taken over the reins of the world's second biggest economy.

Largely unknown outside Japan, he has been nicknamed the "alien" by his fellow party members, because of his somewhat quirky appearance and his reputation for being rather bland and unexpressive.

Miyuki Hatoyama claims to have been on an alien spaceship to Venus

In fact much of the attention in the wake of the election victory has focused on Mr Hatoyama's wife rather than the new prime minister himself.

Miyuki Hatoyama, a former actress, claims she once visited Venus in an extraterrestrial adventure and met Tom Cruise in a past life.

Mr Hatoyama and his wife have one son, an engineering scholar living in Russia.

Party founder

Yukio Hatoyama walked away from the LDP in 1993.

With a small group of lawmakers, he founded New Party Sakigake. The party was part of a reformist coalition that ousted the LDP in elections later that year.

Mr Hatoyama served as deputy chief cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa - but a funding scandal felled the government only eight months later and the LDP was soon back in power.

Mr Hatoyama went on to co-found the Democratic Party of Japan. Initially a minor party, it merged with three others in 1998 and steadily increased in popularity.

In 2002 he was forced to stand down as DPJ leader following strong criticism of his plan for a merger with more opposition groups.

But he returned seven years later after the resignation of leader Ichiro Ozawa in another funding scandal.

Policies will be determined by politicians rather than by bureaucrats Yukio Hatoyama, 23 February 2009

By then the DPJ was in a position of strength. It had rebounded after a drubbing in the 2005 polls, mostly because of a succession of LDP gaffes, policy mix-ups and prime ministerial resignations.

In July 2007 voters used upper house polls to show their displeasure with the LDP, awarding control of the house to the DPJ for the first time.

Voters continued to desert the LDP as the economy faltered in late 2008 and into 2009.

'End collusion'

In his manifesto ahead of the August general election, Mr Hatoyama said he wanted to wrest control from the hands of Japan's powerful bureaucrats.

"I want to create a horizontal society bound by human ties, not a vertically-connected society of vested interests," he wrote.

Mr Hatoyama also said he wanted to raise spending on healthcare, child support and subsidies for farmers.

But he ruled out raising taxes to do this - prompting critics to ask where the money would come from.

Opponents also say he and his party are almost entirely untested in government, questioning whether they have the experience to lead Japan through the current severe recession.