JAPAN: The Laughing God

Meek little Mitsuo Handa had never wanted to make a million yen or be a conquering hero. In his home town of Maebashi, a crumbling provincial capital near Tokyo, Handa spent just enough time at his little bicycle shop to keep his wife and two children in rice and modest clothes; the rest of his time he fribbled away in an aimless search for a milder spiritual refuge than the stern Shintoism of his ancestors.

One day this summer, balding, 63-year-old Handa decided that his search was over. On the telephone poles in Maebashi's dusty streets appeared placards advertising Warau Kamisama, the Laughing God. Said Handa: "I was fascinated. I have always felt that man is most human when he has a smile on his face."

The Meeting. Handa engineered a meeting with the founder of the new religion, moonfaced Zenjiro Nagumo, a sleek, smooth-tongued evangelist who spiced his exhortations with crisp English phrases, Mohammedan aphorisms and quotations from the Buddhist sutras. "Here," said Handa breathlessly, "is a man after my own heart. He has faith."

Handa's fellow townsmen were impressed, too. By last month, converts from the surrounding countryside were streaming into the rickety, broken-down hut which Nagumo used as his headquarters, to be comforted by Nagumo's deity, "The August Inside of Heaven Owner God." To demonstrate their true faith, the converts always laughed when they prayed. "The spirit of the smile," glowed Nagumo, "must linger in everything we do."

Nagumo needed more impressive surroundings if the merry conversions were to continue. Said he to Shopkeeper Handa: "A truly religious person is ready to sacrifice his all to save other people's souls. Under the circumstances, it would be most noble on your part to sell your best clothing. Thus we shall be able to buy an altar."

The Parting. Mrs. Handa, a weary, practical housewife, objected shrilly. She was fed up with her husband's ritualistic drum-beating and flute-playing; the neighbors had ostracized her. But Handa was unmoved. He sold the family's clothes; in return, the new altar was installed in the Handa household.

Soon, however, the happy converts stopped showing up. The Handas heard stories that the great Nagumo had collected large sums of money for altars from other families without delivering the sacred goods. This was too much for Mrs. Handa; her husband reluctantly agreed to drop the new religion.

Last week Handa sat mournfully beside the altar, in his underwear (he was going easy on the few clothes he had left). The rickety shack where the great Nagumo had bowed to the Laughing God was bare and deserted. Few of his former disciples were in a laughing mood.