ワールドメイトてどんな団体？２３

THE WEEKEND AUSTEALIAN(April 6-7, 2002)　

(Cover page)

The mysterious Mister Handa

「謎の男 ミスター半田」

He’s rich, runs a religious cult in Japan and hands out so much money to Australian arts groups that they tolerate his opera singing. Who is Haruhisa Handa?

International man of mystery

A wealthy Japanese philanthropist donates large sum of money to Western Australia’s arts community. But while everyone loves his money-and tolerates his opera singing -few people know who he is, and how he got so rich.

神がいないのは546
546が沈むのも時間の問題

(Once upon a time, in a far-off place full of struggling artisans,
a singing seer from a foreign land arrived and proffered sums of money
they’d never seen before.
So grateful were they that they invited him to become their world president
and let him sing whenever he wished. And they all lived happily ever after.)

>>546
優れたご意見はこちらへもﾄﾞｿﾞｰ
今回の鹿島で思うところがあった方もﾄﾞｿﾞｰ
http://www.makani.to/~kito/bbs/index.htm?brd=5
真実が語られています

It sounds like a bizarre fairy tale, but the story of 51-year-old Haruhisa Handa and his love affair with Perth is strange but true.
The Japanese businessman cum New Age priest has handed out multimillions of dollars to the arts community of Western Australia’s capital,
making him indisputably the cash cow king of the west. Those on the receiving end, from performing arts colleges to universities,
opera schools and art galleries, have gratefully accepted his benevolence, heaped on the accolades and two honorary doctorates,
and indulged Handa’s passion for opera and singing in public.

http://homepage.mac.com/hiroyuki44/hankaku06.html

DOQI被告

Little interest has been shown in the religion he runs, or the source of his income. It’s been a
mutually beneficial affair that has bubbled along quietly for a decade. The personable philanthropist
with moderate English skills and large entourage has usually arrived in Perth and left again for
Tokyo to little fanfare.
Now, Handa has stepped into the limelight after making the biggest single donation to a festival in
Australia -$1 million promised to the Perth International Arts Festival. In return, PIAF artistic
director Sean Doran announced in February that Handa had been ordained “world president” of
PIAF. Why “world” president? “Because he’s outside the country,” responded Doran.

５５０には５４８，５４９，５５１が読めません（核爆

The lofty title raised a few eyebrows, especially after Doran announced that Handa would preside
over a series of international PIAF events around midyear in Danberra, London, Singapore and New
York to launch the 2003 festival. The audience in each city may wonder how an Irishman (Doran)
came to introduce a Japanese national (Handa) as the world president of an Australian arts festival -
especially if Handa launches into an Italian aria. So who is this guy? And where does his money
come from?
“You don’t ask questions, you just say ‘thank you’,” says one member of Perth’s arts community
who prefers not to be named but has received Handa’s generosity.
“His itinerary is something out of Howard Hughes,” observes another arts official who has watched
Handa in action. “10.02, Mr. Handa will enter will enter the room; 10.04, Mr. Handa’s ladies-in-
waiting will bow and scrape. He’s an enigma with deep pockets.”

Haruhisa Handa began acquiring assets in western Australia in the late 1980’s. He and a Tokyo-based company,
the Cosmomate Japan group of companies (of which Handa is chairman), control the issued shares in Cosmomate Australia which owns a 400-berth marina in Fremantle, two luxury houses, a travel agency and a farm outside Perth.

But his antipodean mini-empire is dwarfed by the bigger Cosmomate Corporation in Japan, whose
businesses include a watchmaking factory, a publishing house and coaching schools for high school
students. According to his official profile, Handa “owns and manages 13 Japanese and international
corporations.”

“People are always asking me how come I am so successful,” he once told a Perth crowd from the
WA Calligraphy Guild, to whom he had donated more than $ 10,000. Handa proceeded to outline his
achievements, gave a demonstration of his calligraphy skills, and sang - aided by a 30-member
Japanese choir he had brought with him. “It was bizarre- he went on so long that they were rushing
around trying to find chairs to stop elderly people from falling over,” recalls one invitee.

“I call him High Maintenance Handa,” says another recipient of Handa sponsorship. “When his
assistant told me, ‘Mr. Handa will now sing,’ I said, ‘Not here, he won’t.”
Handa’s CV details a remarkably long list of achievements, as a philanthropist and international
sponsor of golf for the blind, businessman, “respected economic critic and author of 60 books on
subjects related to modern civilization, religion and economics.” It also lists him as “a music
composer, conductor, vocalist, composer of waka and haiku poetry, calligrapher, tea master, flower
arrangement master, Noh actor, public speaker, ballet dancer and modern stage actor.” And, under
the adopted Buddhist name of Toshu Fukami, he is an “ordained Zen priest.”

Doran describes Handa as “ a consummate performer” with “ an Eastern approach” to mixing
business and the arts. “It’s not an egotistical thing but a deep passion for the arts, “ he says. A
London reviewer was less charitable when confronted with Handa’s singing and his orchestral
composition, Continent of Mu, during an English Chamber Orchestra concert in January.
“Looking a bit like a cheesy entertainer on a Caribbean cruise, Handa growled and mumbled his
way through Mozart, Bellini and Wagner,” wrote Guardian journalist Ian Buruma. While Buruma
acknowledged that Handa had sponsored the entire show and donated box office proceeds to a
charity for the blind, “I could not help reflecting, nonetheless, about the remarkable lack of humility,
the bizarre shamelessness of such ego-inflationary performances.”

But egotism is a small price to pay, argue Handa’s fans, for generosity that far outstrips any single
arts patron in Perth and probably most in Australia. It amounts to millions of dollars disbursed
through the International Foundation for Arts and Culture (IFAC), of which Handa is “founder and
world president”.
His money has helped a veritable who’s who of Australian cultural life. For example, he sponsored
the Australian Ballet’s 1999 New York season, the Australian Chamber Orchestra on its last Tokyo
tour, the annual Australian Singing Competition, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s annual
Year 12 Perspectives show. And six years ago, Handa wrote a $400,000 cheque for the cost of a WA
Academy of Performing Arts studio, which is named after him.

Geoff Gibbs, who was WAAPA's director at the time, now runs the IFAC for Handa in Australia. "I
think he's wonderful," says Gibbs emphatically. "I find him invigorating and challenging and my job
is to present to him projects that are stimulating."
Gibbs especially admires Handa's active participation in the arts, although he once counselled his
boss against singing at a Sydney Opera House event. "Had he sung in that environment, it would not
have showcased him to his advantage."

Gibbs says his job is "to protect Mr. Handa's reputation and image, to ensure he's not exposed to
ridicule". Access to Handa is carefully vetted; according to Cosmomate's Perth accountant Michael
Gasson, an interview for this story would not be granted unless the questions were submitted
beforehand and an outline of the story handed over for approval. The Weekend Australian Magazine
refused the latter demand, and our written and verbal requests for an interview were declined.

Last month, The Australian newspaper asked Gibbs for a comment from Handa when he was made
PIAF's "world president". "He was delighted," replied Gibbs. "You'll have to take it from me that's
what he said.
"Those of us who are very close to him talk to him on e-mail or fax and his assistant translates for
him, although she's not high on the pecking order," Gibbs explained. "It's like trying to contact the
Queen."

Conversely, Handa's own ability to access prominent people seems unparalleled. Two years ago,
Handa presented his own musical composition to Pope John Paul II and 60,000 Catholic pilgrims
assembled in St. Peter's Square. Gibbs and two Australian Cosmomate employees were flown to
Rome to witness the event. " The Pope was absolutely amazed to see 40 people in kimonos singing a
Kyrie to him."
To the obvious question of how Handa amassed his personal fortune, Gibbs points to the fact that
he owns more than ten private companies, has no family and "can spend his money how he pleases".

Next week, Handa's patronage in Australia will reach new heights when he hands over $1.4
million to yet another cause, a new opera training school for Australia's next generation of talented
opera singers. The Australian Opera Studio took in its first students in February, and will be formally
launched this week by Handa in person. The Studio was conceived by former Australian opera
baritone Gregory Yurisich, who describes Handa as "the only Renaissance man I've ever met". And,
he adds, the only man with dozens of secretaries to keep track of his business and philanthropic
work. "He hardly ever sleeps," says Yurisich. "When I go to Japan two or three times a year, it's
nothing to be giving him a singing lesson at three in the morning."
Yurisich claims his patron "is only one of 20 modern calligraphers to be taken into the permanent
collection of the British Museum, his art has received rave reviews in France, and his [musical]
compositions have been described as admirable". And, for the record, "he's not a bad singer".
"He certainly gets what he does get because he pays for it, but in some cases his talent would get it
for him," says Yurisich. "And, unlike some Australians, he's not cleaving his wealth unto himself."

Handa's wealth began washing up on the sores of Western Australia after he went for a sail on the
Swan River in 1987 and (he later told reporters in Japan) felt God descend on its sparkling waters.
For Handa is also the charismatic spiritual leader of his own religious sect, originally called
Powerful Cosmomate, which he established in 1984 as "a new stream" of Japan's indigenous religion
of Shinto.
Now renamed "Worldmate", the sect claims on its web site to have 41,000 followers, and they
revere their leader, Handa, as providing a spiritual link to the gods. Followers buy talismans,
exorcisms and personal intercession and prayer (sometimes by Handa himself) to improve their
spiritual wellbeing. Imagined star travel is a popular theme, during which miracles can occur to
improve status, income or health.

Individual Web sites created by Worldmate followers describe how "a chrysanthemum will appear
on the forehead of your soul" to signify that a person has signed up with the group, and how "the
minute someone ceases to be a member, they may feel uneasy in their soul", causing many to
promptly rejoin. Followers pay at least $430 a month to become platinum members, less for gold,
and there is an economy fee for high school students. Higher membership gibes privileged access to
ceremonies, to "deeper and deeper parts of the [Worldmate] Shinto shrine", and to Handa himself.
Believers are advised to read Handa's books (with titles like "Miraculaous Luck at Shrines") "if you
really want the gods to move massively in your favor".

Worldmate is among several contemporary Japanese religious movements listed by a British-based
research group on Asian religions as "emphasizing occult, magical and miraculous elements". While
one group, Aum Shinrikyo, gained global notoriety in the 1990s for its subway gas attack, the
Overview of World Religions (based at the Department of Religion and Ethics at St.Martin's college,
Britain) states that most other "new wave" Japanese religious groups are benign. "Whether or not
they can deliver the miracles they promise," says the Overview, "[they] are nevertheless able to
provide new forms - or in many cases re-establish traditional forms - of social relationships for
millions of people in today's high-tech Japan."

And donate large sums to charity, it might have added. For if Handa's personal generosity is
indisputable, so, it seems, is that of his worldwide philanthropy in setting up ten schools in
Cambodia and the Sihanouk Hospital for 24-houremergency treatment. The hospital's own Web site
credits both Handa "and 50,000 [sic] Worldmate supporters who together account for the broad
majority of the financial support".

Handa makes a clear distinction between his business entities and the religious body Worldmate,
which he has sought - so far unsuccessfully - to have registered as a religion (which would allow him
to claim donations for religious observances as tax exempt). A 2000 official report on religious cults
prepared, post the Aum Shinrikyo incident, for Japan's Police Agency and Ministries of Justice,
Health and Welfare refers to Worldmate's precursor, Powerful Cosmomate, as a "Shinto-based cult".
But on its official Web site, Worldmate points out that its members are subject to "absolutely no
coercion or need to leave home", and that the organization aims to promote worship and "the
happiness of Japan and the world".

In 1994, Handa told a Tokyo press conference that in the Shinto religion, dancing, singing and
having fun were "all part of religious activity". Even sailing on a luxury yacht in Perth could have a
religious aspect, "because God descends to the Swan River often".
Confusion had emerged over Handa's business activities and its relationship to his religious affairs
in Australia, after a four-meter-high red Shinto shrine gate was erected in the grounds of
Cosmomate's farm at Byford, 30km south of Perth. It caused a flurry of media speculation that
Japanese cultists would arrive in droves.

In fact, several hundred Japanese tourists had already savoured farmstay living, mixing
motivational lectures by Handa with innocuous pastimes such as collecting fresh eggs and
stargazing. When plans for a $1.5 million farmstay complex were submitted to the local council, a
lawyer for Cosmomate Australia quickly assured the council the farmstay was a strictly commercial
venture (which never eventuated) and was not seeking exemption from council rates as a religious
organization.

Meanwhile, four television media crews from Japan had descended on Perth, prompted by a
Japanese Tax Office investigation into a Handa company and speculation about whether undisclosed
income had been used to purchase "religious" fixtures in Australia.
Cosmomate Australia, owner of the Australian assets, pointed out that it was not under any tax
scrutiny and had been regularly audited. And an indignant Handa told the Tokyo press conference
that the "compulsory investigation by the tax office's audit intelligence department" was " nothing
more than an outrageous abuse of state power" directed at small religious group like his own.

Michael Gasson told "The Australian" that the investigation was late dropped, " and did not result
in any penalties, or additional tax paid thorough misdemeanour". He said the Byford farm still has "a
small area with temple gates, which we loosely refer to as the Shrine, where Mr. Handa sometimes
comes with [Worldmate followers] to pray". But the farm was not a religious fixture, he said.

Gregory Yurisich says the raising of such past events is unwarranted: "It's terribly un-Australian of
us all." Whether Handa himself is as sensitive to questioning about aspects of his career remains
untested. In February, he flew to the Adelaide Festival for the premiere of Black Swan Theatre
Company's "The Career Hilights of the Mamu", a play by the Perth-based company in which Handa
features in a video clip and to which he donated $40,000. This reporter attended the performance
and, during the interval, spotted Handa standing in the lobby. He amicably shook hands after I
introduced myself, but we had barely exchanged words when an agitated female assistant ended the
conversation.

At the play's end, sponsor Handa was invited on stage to sing a Japanese song. He gave a spirited, if
slightly off-key, rendition, interspersed with furtive glances at his sheet music. The next day, at the
airport, Handa's travelling entourage of seven stood around their seated boss as we waited to board
the same plane to Perth.
"Does Mr. Handa always sing?" I tentatively asked one of Handa's employees, referring to the
previous night's performance. "Oh yes," he beamed, "he's an international opera singer."