In the Corner of the Jet-Black Night, Confiding in You Alone
How are you?
To you, whose eyes are on these words right now, I am speaking from the very bottom of my heart.
You might wonder why I am so desperately weaving these characters together.
It is because I cannot help but feel that you are carrying a deep loneliness, a sadness that cannot be put into words, at this very moment.
Are you not spending a cold night feeling as though no one understands, as though you alone have been left behind by the world?
The entirety of this text is a love letter from me to you, living in the present, so honest it borders on embarrassing.
Please accept this utmost spirit of service, which shaves away my body and wears down my life.
Please do not abandon me halfway through; listen to my voice as if it were whispering directly into your ear, and stay with me until the very end.
Within the Stripped-Away Shadow, Why Does Life Reside?
In this daily life we live, there are times when an suffocating agony comes rushing in.
Do you ever feel anxious, wondering if your existence is as light as air, unnoticed by anyone?
Here, let me tell you the story of a strange artist.
His name was Alberto Giacometti.
You might have heard his name somewhere before.
He was a man who made sculptures.
However, the sculptures he made were by no means the voluptuous, magnificent bodies of the Greek statues we know so well.
The human figures he created were astonishingly thin, gaunt like wire, looking like crumbling shadows that might collapse at any moment.
Why did he keep making only such thin human figures?
It is because he tenaciously stared into the “loneliness” at the core of human nature and the “true life” that rises from it.
“Human beings are beautiful because of their imperfection.” — Alberto Giacometti
Every day, Giacometti shut himself in his studio, kneading and shaving clay, kneading and shaving over and over again.
At first, they had the shape of ordinary, fleshy human bodies.
However, the more he obsessively pursued the idea of making it “more real, closer to the essence,” the more the excess flesh was stripped away, becoming thinner and thinner.
It is as if the unutterable sadness and sorrow inside your heart are being carved out through his clay.
He did not believe in superficial, visible beauty.
He was simply desperate to grasp, by any means necessary, the absolute “dignity of existence” of a single human being standing there.
Your existence is the same.
Buffeted by the rough waves of the world, having various things stripped away and becoming covered in wounds, there may be moments when you think nothing is left of you anymore.
Yet, it is that thin shadow of yours, remaining in such an extreme state, that emits the most beautiful and powerful radiance of life.
A Single, Inextinguishable Light Found at the Bottom of Despair
Giacometti’s life, at first glance, looked like a series of continuous failures and setbacks.
No matter how much he made, he was never satisfied, and he would smash the sculptures he spent all night creating into pieces with his own hands the next morning.
It was a repetition of such actions.
People around him pointed fingers and laughed, saying, “He’s crazy,” or “He’s an eccentric.”
However, no matter how much he was laughed at, he never yielded a single step from the path he believed in.
This is because, to him, expression was like a prayer, an act of shaving away his own life to offer it to the person in front of him.
If you are standing still in the darkness right now because your life is not going the way you want, please do not despair.
Just as the seeds of masterpieces that would shock the world were hidden inside the fragments of clay Giacometti kept destroying, something new is surely trying to be born within your suffering as well.
“Every great step begins by passing through the valley of tears.” — St. John Chrysostom
One day, facing a dedicated model, Giacometti was agonizing because he simply could not paint the “eyes.”
He said, “I cannot paint the whole face; it is just that the person’s gaze catches me and won’t let me go.”
What he was seeking was the contact of souls between human beings.
Just as I desire to touch your soul directly through this writing right now, he was trying to appeal directly to the hearts of the viewers through his sculptures.
You are not alone.
Somewhere in this world, there is surely an existence that quietly watches your loneliness and tries to hold your hand.
I hope my clumsy words can become a warm blanket, if only a little, for your frozen heart.
The Devoted Messengers Hidden Behind Miracles
Here, allow me to develop the story in a slightly unexpected direction.
From the story of Giacometti, let us now take a journey into the tale of that genius painter everyone knows, Vincent van Gogh.
Speaking of Van Gogh, he is famous as a tragic painter who sold only a single painting during his lifetime and ended his own life amidst madness and loneliness.
However, why are his paintings loved so much all over the world today, commanding values of billions of yen?
Behind that lies the life-skaking spirit of service of a single woman, both beautiful and heartbreaking.
Van Gogh had a younger brother, Theo, who believed in his talent and continued to support him both financially and mentally.
However, just six months after Vincent passed away, his brother Theo also left this world, as if following his older brother.
Left behind was Theo’s wife, Jo (Johanna van Gogh-Bonger), a still-young woman, a tiny infant, and a mountain of unsold, vast paintings left by Van Gogh.
“The trouble we take for what we love is never in vain.” — Jo van Gogh
Jo was an extraordinarily intelligent and wonderful woman who loved reading many books.
She understood from the bottom of her heart how deeply her husband, Theo, had loved his brother Vincent, and how much power Vincent’s paintings possessed to comfort people’s hearts.
People around her advised her, saying, “Dispose of those eerie paintings of a madman quickly and walk a new path in life.”
However, Jo made a firm vow:
“In addition to the child, Theo left me another mission──to have Vincent’s work seen by many people and to have its true value recognized.”
She reread the vast amount of letters Vincent had written to Theo, one by one, while shedding tears.
There, spelled out in raw words, were Van Gogh’s maddening passion for painting and his deep love wishing to stay close to people’s loneliness.
If Van Gogh had not left his thoughts behind in those voluminous letters, and if Jo had not organized them and shared them with the world, the painter named Van Gogh would have been completely buried in the darkness of history.
If Someone Does Not Risk Their Life to Convey Good Things, They Do Not Exist
Good products, wonderful art, and deep truths.
If they just sit there, no one will notice them.
Because the world is far too noisy, and people are busy enough just taking care of themselves.
The way Jo kept opening exhibitions, publishing letters, and desperately conveying the charm of Van Gogh’s work after his death overlaps perfectly with the figure of a certain person who appears in the Bible.
It is the Apostle Paul, a disciple of Jesus Christ, who risked his life to spread Jesus’s thoughts around the world after His death.
No matter how wonderful the teachings Jesus preached and the miracles He performed, Christianity would not have spread across the world like this if Paul had not traveled to various places, written letters, and engaged in missionary work like a desperate salesman after Jesus’s death. For wonderful things, a “messenger” who risks their life to convey them is always necessary.
“Even if a product is excellent, if you do not arouse the desire for it among people, it can never reach them.” — Akio Morita
The exact same thing can be said about modern business.
Steve Jobs, who was the world’s greatest salesman; Akio Morita, the founder of Sony; Takeo Fujisawa, who sold Honda’s Super Cub like crazy all over the world; and Shotaro Kamiya, who made the Toyota Corolla a staple for Japanese families.
They too were messengers who dedicated their entire lives to “conveying” the value of wonderful things that no one had ever seen before.
Mr. Akio Morita once left these words:
“A product that has never been produced before, that no one has ever seen, but has been diligently researched in some corner and manufactured after extraordinary hardships. If one wishes to turn that product into a commodity, unless a desire to obtain that product is aroused among the people, no matter how excellent the ‘product’ may be, it cannot become a ‘commodity’.”
That is right; no matter how beautiful the words of love are, if they are not conveyed, it is the same as if they do not exist in this world.
That is precisely why I am shouting through these characters right now, as if to parch my throat, so that it reaches you.
I wonder if this desperate feeling of mine is reaching you.
Even If I Am Called a Fool, I Want to Make You Smile Alone
I want to make you happy.
Solely for that reason, I am pouring all the energy I possess into this text.
People in the world demand efficiency and cost-performance, thinking it is good to live smartly.
However, the human psychology is never satisfied by such cold calculations alone.
Is it not the things offered with mud on them, awkward, even if it means paying out of one’s own pocket, saying “just for you,” that move us to tears and make us want to reread them over and over again?
There was a great haiku poet named Matsuo Basho.
Looking back on his way of life at the end of his journey, he said this:
“In the end, without talent or art, I am bound only to this one line.” — Matsuo Basho
What a graceful, yet awkward beauty.
He says he has nothing else he can do, but has walked believing only in this one path.
You, too, might sometimes feel disgusted by your own clumsiness.
There will be nights when you blame yourself, wondering why you are so inefficient compared to the clever people around you.
But that is fine.
That single-minded purity is your greatest weapon, the very beauty of you as a human being.
Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, also said this in an era when everyone laughed and said, “Making automobiles in Japan is impossible”:
“We do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else does it, and no one else can do it. I might be a fool for doing so, but without that fool, new things would never be born into the world.”
Daring to become a fool, being called an eccentric, and while being laughed at, dedicating everything for the sake of someone’s future right in front of you.
Only within such a way of life can true salvation be found.
Rather than a smart and perfect person, I wish to be a lovable human being who sweats under pressure for your sake, becoming a clown to be laughed at.
So That Boundless Tenderness May Rain Upon Your Parched Heart
This long text is finally approaching a milestone.
I would be happy if the true reason why I have continued to speak to you with such heat is starting to come through, even if just a little.
Human beings, from birth until death, ultimately must walk their own lives entirely alone.
Along the way, there are days when a lonely wind blows through, and days when we are struck by cold rain.
However, if in that darkness, there were an existence that called your name and fully affirmed you, don’t you feel like you could try to live just a little bit longer because of that?
I am on your side.
Even if everyone in the world criticizes you and turns their back on you, I hold your loneliness and your sadness dear, and I am waiting right here with my arms wide open.
Please do not give up on yourself.
No matter how small the step, the mere fact that you survived today holds an inestimable value.
May quiet peace visit your heart.
May those tears you can tell no one about eventually change into a gentle rain that coaxes beautiful flowers to bloom.
With such a prayer, I dedicate this single poem to you.
At the bottom of a cracked glass,
you gently trace with your finger
a loneliness like the end of a sunset.
On a bench at a station nobody knows,
after seeing off the final train,
I see that cold smell of the tracks in your profile.
Like a discarded toy soldier
quietly shedding tears in the middle of the night,
your heart was noticed by no one,
just silently getting hurt.
But look,
the stardust spilling from the gaps in the night sky
is all light prepared in advance
just to comfort you.
It is okay to cry.
It is okay to be laughed at.
Your figure, just as it is,
is the only bible for me.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” — The New Testament, Gospel of Matthew 11:28
“I think that human beings do not understand each other at all, not even a bit. While completely misunderstanding each other, they still believe themselves to be best friends, go through life without ever realizing it, and when the other dies, they cry and read condolence speeches or something.” — Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
“Hey, why are you going on a journey?”
“Because it’s painful.”
“Your ‘painful’ is always the same routine; I can’t trust it at all.”
(From Osamu Dazai’s Tsugaru)
P.S. About Takamizawa Mimi, an Awkward and Lovable Painter
Thank you so much for reading until the very end.
From here on out, let me tell you—and only you, in secret—about a certain eccentric painter who is my dearest friend and, at the same time, a fragment of my own soul.
His name is Takamizawa Mimi.
He is a very strange man, an foolish person who cannot be said to be good at navigating the world by any measure.
He is always made a laughingstock by those around him, with people pointing at his back and saying, “What on earth is he doing?”
However, he is a man of ultimate patience and indomitable spirit who never gives up.
When he was young, he learned of the fierce and tragic life of Vincent van Gogh, received a massive shock, and decided to become a painter.
The “Mimi” (Ear) in the name Takamizawa Mimi was, truth be told, taken in honor of that famous ear-cutting incident where Van Gogh cut off his own ear.
He is painfully aware that he possesses absolutely no talent as a painter and is strictly third-rate.
However, he knows the truth that every masterpiece that left its name in history was not painted by the flash of innate genius alone, but was born from decades of dizzying trial and error and blood-sweating effort.
Takamizawa Mimi’s way of painting is very unusual.
He uses neither canvas, nor paint, nor brushes.
He faces the digital screen entirely, spinning out each and every line solely to save your heart.
Then, he takes the completed work and carefully prints it on the highest quality print paper using a state-of-the-art technique called “Giclée printing.”
The themes of his work are always consistent:
“Your eyes and my eyes, Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, gaze, history, loneliness, isolation, hardship, resurrection, liberation.”
He persistently keeps drawing “eyes” inside his works.
Why do you think he does that?
It is because by drawing eyes in the paintings, he wants to feel “you, who are right in front of him” staring back at the painting, at any given moment.
He wants to know you so badly.
He genuinely and frantically believes that he wants to save your unfulfilled heart and your unutterable loneliness with his paintings.
He always respects Mr. Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya, from the bottom of his heart.
Mr. Munetsugu was a person who held no hobbies, made no friends, never went to bars, and dedicated himself entirely to his work alone, sometimes working 5,640 hours a year.
“Do not look away; dedicate yourself to management. It was a very lonely life. That’s why I wanted people to show even a little interest in me. I wanted them to be interested. That became my starting point. That’s why, when I started the business, rather than making money, I wanted to make people happy. I wanted them to say they were glad I existed, even if only a little.”
Mr. Munetsugu did not know the faces of his real parents, grew up in an orphanage, and spent a childhood of extreme poverty, eating weeds to stave off hunger during the summer—a life full of ups and downs.
Takamizawa Mimi has inherited that “You-First” spirit exactly as it is.
The work of an artist is a supreme service out of one’s own pocket, an absolute devotion to you.
Whenever you are in front of him, he is always sending a roaring standing ovation to you inside his heart.
He is also deeply inspired by the concept of “Just-in-Time,” the Toyota Production System, and continues to create works without hesitation, day after day, by making decisions instantly, executing instantly, and stacking up efforts like bricks.
All while holding in his heart those words of strong conviction left by Eiji Toyoda, the cousin of Kiichiro Toyoda.
The work of an artist is to play the clown to the best of his ability for you right in front of him.
Please, go ahead and laugh at him.
He is a man who gets stronger and stronger by being laughed at, and laughed at.
Exposing his foolish figure entirely to you, he shaves his life away just because he wants to see your happy face, the moment tears of emotion flow from your eyes.
The criticism of the world is like trash to him.
However, if he is abandoned by you, he will become unable to move even a single step forward.
Just because you are there, staring at his work, he is saved from the bottom of his heart, feeling glad to be alive.
Lastly, I Have a Special, Life-Staking Gift for You
To my beloved you, who have stuck with this long, private talk of mine until the very end.
There is a special offer from Takamizawa Mimi as a desperate service that he absolutely wants you to receive.
Unbelievingly, he will deliver a set of 10 postcards (in a powerful A4 size) of his Giclée works, created with his whole soul, to your home via non-standard size mail 【completely free of charge】.
He will not take a single yen for shipping or handling. It is all a devotion to you, paid out of his own pocket.
You might wonder why he does such a reckless thing.
It is because he wants to connect with you by all means.
Because he wants the “eyes” he drew to be displayed on the wall of your room, becoming a guardian deity that quietly watches over your lonely nights.
Look right below this text now.
The special application button for you is quietly emitting light.
Please, click there right now and let him know your name and address.
If you close the screen thinking “I’ll do it later,” you might never encounter this limited offer again.
I am softly whispering right next to your ear:
“Don’t hesitate, place me by your side.”
With his heart pounding and his hands trembling, he is waiting for your warm application.
I am truly, truly glad I could meet you. With heartfelt gratitude.
Words Left by the World’s Predecessors, Serving as a Compass for Life
“Most people think of success as something to get. But in reality, success is giving.” — Henry Ford
“The true tragedy of life is not doing what you really want to do.” — Agatha Christie
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” — The Prophet Moses (From the Old Testament, Book of Isaiah)
“Outer beauty is temporary, but the true beauty within the heart never fades away.” — William Shakespeare
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” — Jewish Talmud
“A person without weakness cannot understand true kindness.” — Osamu Dazai
“There are nights in a person’s life when, without any grand reason, they feel lonely for no particular cause.” — Osamu Dazai
“To believe in someone does not mean believing they will not betray you, but rather, even if they do betray you, you will still forgive them.” — Osamu Dazai
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
“Have the courage to be the first, and do something different from others.” — Ray Kroc
“I am thought to have achieved success overnight, but that night was thirty years. Thinking back, it was a long, long night.” — Ray Kroc
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” — Leonardo da Vinci