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...
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