Shinsekai

This guide to Shinsekai in Osaka traces the strange origin of Billiken, a grinning wish-granting figure a Kansas City art teacher said she saw in a dream in 1908. It follows him across the Pacific to Luna Park, the amusement district built here beneath the newly raised Tsutenkaku tower, and to the day in 1923 when the park closed its gates for good. From there the guide follows a hundred-year search with no photograph, no sale record and no confession. Listen near the tower's base, where his statue still draws visitors rubbing his feet for luck.