TOKYO - A political blue blood like many in Japanese politics, Yukio Hatoyama is poised to become the country's next prime minister in a most unlikely way -- by taking down the seemingly invincible political machine his own grandfather helped create.
As Japan heads into crucial elections on Sunday, Hatoyama widely leads Prime Minister Taro Aso as the person most voters want as their leader, according to several media polls. The Democratic Party of Japan, which Hatoyama helped found a decade ago, is forecast to mark a sweeping victory in the race for all 480 seats in the lower house of parliament.
If it does, Hatoyama will almost certainly be named prime minister.
The 62-year-old former engineer is at the forefront of a political movement that has made stunning inroads toward breaking the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's domination of the government, which began when his grandfather helped start the party in 1955.
Stiff and professor-like, Hatoyama is an unlikely figure to bring about major political change.
He is not seen as charismatic and has a tendency to be verbose and dismissive. His shock of curly hair is often piled up on his head as though he just awoke from a troubled sleep. He has even garnered the nickname "alien" because he can come across as eccentric or aloof.
During the campaign, Hatoyama appealed to voters with promises that he will cut wasteful government spending, rein in the power of the bureaucracy and put more money in consumers' pockets by holding off on tax hikes that the ruling party has said are in the works.
One of his biggest departures from the LDP's positions is Japan's relationship with the United States, its biggest trading partner and military ally. He wants Japan to be more independent from Washington and closer to Asia.
"We must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia," he has said.
But Hatoyama has also stressed he does not intend to change Japan's course overnight. In an opinion piece published Thursday in The New York Times, Hatoyama said the U.S.-Japan alliance would "continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy."
Polls indicate that voters want change -- but not too much. And Hatoyama's relatively conservative pedigree suggests that he's not going to seek any radical departures from what most Japanese feel comfortable with.
"I'm not sure if Mr. Hatoyama can be a strong leader," said Tomio Ogura, a 72-year-old retiree. "But let's give him a chance, and we'll see how he does."
Though politics run in the family -- his grandfather was premier from 1954-1956 -- it was not Hatoyama's first career choice.
He studied engineering at the prestigious University of Tokyo and earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University before starting a teaching career.
But in 1983, he became a private secretary to his father, who also was a lawmaker and once served foreign minister. Three years later, he was elected to parliament from a district from the northern island of Hokkaido. He has since been re-elected seven times.
Hatoyama stuck with the Liberal Democrats until 1993, when he left the ruling party and joined the opposition to form a coalition government made up of seven other groups.
The ruling party was then awash in corruption scandals, and this "grand coalition" pushed them out of office for the first time. Hatoyama served as a senior spokesman for that government, although he did not have a Cabinet-level post.
The coalition was short-lived, however, lasting less than 11 months before collapsing under ideological rifts.
Hatoyama went on to co-found the Democratic Party of Japan with Ichiro Ozawa -- another former LDP baron. After skillfully developing their base in urban areas and whittling away at the ruling party's support, the Democrats used voter anger over economic problems and ruling party scandals to surge to a victory in upper house elections in 2007 that gave them control of the chamber.
Ousting Aso's party on Sunday would bring Hatoyama's family saga full circle.
During the U.S. occupation of Japan, which ended in 1952, his grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama helped found the Liberal Party. He was nominated in 1946 to become prime minister, but was forced out of public service by the U.S. authorities before he could run.
It was eight years later -- following Aso's grandfather Shigeru Yoshida's turn in office and the Liberal Party's expansion into the Liberal Democratic Party -- that Ichiro Hatoyama became prime minister.
Now, his grandson believes that his time has come.
"Now is the chance," Yukio Hatayama said during a recent campaign speech. "We are going to make a big historic change."
Experts say Hatoyama is largely untested and its hard to predict how he would fare in the nation's top job.
"He is a miserable candidate," said Jeff Kingston, Temple University Director of Asian Studies. "He is wooden, he is stiff, he can't improvise. His image is that he is not a very decisive leader, somebody who's not so charismatic, not so strong-willed."
Political analyst Tsuneo Watanabe said, however, that Hatoyama has learned how to listen and build consensus -- a knack that he said the ruling party has lost amid constant infighting and the succession of three prime ministers in the last three years.
"Hatoyama knows how to connect his ideas with the voters," Watanabe said. "Unlike the past three LDP prime ministers, who failed to connect with the people, I think Hatoyama will be an improvement."
