The Jewish God found Macou Hirata at breakfast one morning in a San Francisco bagel shop. Hirata, a Japanese food executive who had never before tasted the chewy, doughy bread, immediately smelled a business potential.

“Until now many, many Japanese businesses tried to start bagel businesses in Japan,” says Hirata, speaking by phone from Takamatsu City, Japan. “All the projects lost lots of money besides mine. It depends on economic circumstances, but besides I think I was chosen by the Jewish God.”

And in fact, almost as if by the hand of providence, in the space of six months after his 1996 trip, Hirata, once a typically rigid Japanese businessman, transformed into an entrepreneur of bold spirit. He’s since spread the doughnut-shaped bread throughout the Land of the Rising Sun, though in forms unrecognizable to the New York purist.

They’re not only sweeter and softer, but also available in flavors such as pumpkin. As for the tried-and-true schmear? Think chicken breast in teriyaki sauce.

Some five years later, with 12 Macou’s Bagels shops under his belt, Hirata, 37, says he runs the largest bagel enterprise in Japan, hopes to expand to 100 shops, and is pursuing a budding interest in Jewish culture, especially its culinary traditions. Earlier this summer, Hirata scheduled an eating binge in the heart of Jewish food land, New York City. Ben Carp, a graduate student at Yale University who speaks some Japanese and founded the school’s Chai Society, accompanied him.

“I tried H & H and Ess-A-Bagels — which were very delicious,” says Hirata. “I even found a square-shaped bagel” at Cosi Sandwich bar. That, he says, “I found it a little bit strange.”

Meanwhile, Carp’s mouth watered. It was Tisha b’Av, a mournful day of fasting on the Jewish calendar.

Hirata sampled humus, challah and the potato knish. The last was a hit. Carp writes in an e-mail that he was impressed “with Macou’s sense of veneration for what may seem to you or me as commonplace and not especially haute cuisine such as the knish.”

The popularity of Macou’s Bagels comes during a mini-bagel boom in Japan. Just 10 years ago, a New Yorker with a craving had only two known options: Fox’s Bagels in the hip Tokyo neighborhood of Roppongi or the Jewish Community Center of Japan, where the only fresh, homemade kosher bagels are still served.

These days there’s a Japanese Web site devoted to the bagel, and in addition to finding a dozen local operations, Japanese bagel connoisseurs can easily sink their teeth into the products of Bagels by Bell, a Brooklyn bakery with a large export business, or of H &H, the venerable Upper West Side shop, which has been selling its whole-y bread in Japan since October 1997.

But Hirata doesn’t seem to want to talk about the competition. He’s focused on his own vision, hoping to send his Japanese customers on culinary adventures to unknown tastes.

“Please,” he begs a reporter, “give me the typical recipe for the knish.”