During this week’s budget session in the National Diet, Japan’s bicameral legislature, the country’s defense minister, Gen Nakatani, faced an unusual question: Have Japanese fighter jets ever intercepted extraterrestrial objects and are there government studies going on to determine the existence of extraterrestrial visitors to Japan?
According to the AFP, the questions were posed by Antonio Inoki, a flamboyant former celebrity wrestler-turned-politician, during Wednesday’s meeting of the Upper House Budget Committee.
Fortunately, for the maverick politician, who appeared to be genuinely concerned over an Independence Day–like attack scenario from outer space, the questions could be answered in the negative by Nakatani.
“When the Air Self Defense Force detects indications of an unidentified flying object that could violate our country’s airspace, it scrambles fighter jets if necessary and makes visual observation,” Nakatani noted.
“They sometimes find birds or flying objects other than aircraft but I don’t know of a case of finding an unidentified flying object believed to have come over from anywhere other than Earth,” he emphasized.
In 2007, then defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba, publicly announced that he sees “no ground” to deny the existence of alien-manned UFOs, according to the Washington Post.
That same year, the Japanese government had to officially declare that it, “has not confirmed the existence of unidentified flying objects believed to have come from anywhere other than Earth.”
However, Nobutaka Machimura, then chief cabinet, was skeptical of the denials. “ Personally, I absolutely believe they exist,” he underlined in an interview.
The Washington Post also notes that then-Japanese first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama, claimed to have known Tom Cruise in a previous life. Additionally, she also exposed to the public that she had been abducted by aliens.
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green,” she wrote in a book.
The International Business Times writes that Antonio Inoki, the lawmaker concerned over UFO’s penetrating Japan’s airspace, has helped negotiate the release of Japanese hostages with Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1990. The article also provided a summary of his professional career:
Antonio Inoki is a retired professional wrestler — think Hulk Hogan in terms of popularity, but bigger — who founded New Japan Pro Wrestling and even fought Muhammad Ali in a mixed-martial-arts match in 1976. Inoki was elected to the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, in 1989 and served for six years. (…) He retired from the Diet in 1995, but announced his return to politics in 2013, when he again won election to the House of Councillors.