Reuters: Record by Japan's next leader hot on net auction
Japan's next leader, Yukio Hatoyama, probably never thought a song he recorded 20 years ago would one day fetch a pretty penny on online auction sites. The vinyl single, "Take Heart - Fly, Dove of Peace", recorded in 1988 when Hatoyama was first elected to parliament, recently sold for 35,000 yen in an online auction, a Japanese tabloid reported. The title is a pun on Hatoyama's name, the first half of which is written with an ideograph meaning "dove" and which sounds like the Japanese pronunciation of "heart"...Another copy of the yellow-jacketed record, showing a much younger, grinning Hatoyama, has appeared on a Yahoo! Japan auction with a starting price of 50,000 yen. The auction closes later this week, but so far has no bids. Teruaki Asanuma, the 65-year-old dentist who wrote the song, used his own funds to make 100 copies of the album and gave them to Hatoyama supporters..."I never imagined that there would be a day when this tune would come into the spotlight," Kyodo news agency quoted Asanuma as saying. "Now I hope he will help to guide everyone to happiness as suggested in the lyrics of the song." Japanese media have been digging up video of Hatoyama's formerly less-known artsy side. TV shows on Monday showed him singing in a musical with his wife Miyuki, a one-time performer in an all-female musical theater troupe who has also been grabbing headlines for once writing that she traveled to Venus in a space ship...more...
It just occurred to me that his wife's musings on interplanetary contact put a whole new spin on Hatoyama's earlier comments that "Japan is not just for the Japanese".
