A Midnight Whisper Dedicated to You
In the Beginning, Amidst the Silence
How are you feeling?
The very moment your eyes brushed against these words, a special time belonging only to you and me began.
Please, listen closely to this voice in a quiet place where no one can disturb you.
These words were not released for the whole world.
This is a confession penned with a soul-shaving devotion, offered with a prayer that it might reach the very depths of your vulnerable heart—you, the only one reading this right now.
Have you ever been struck by that indescribable sense of loneliness when you suddenly stop in your tracks, a pain that twinges tightly in the depths of your chest?
Even when surrounded by many people, no matter how heartily you laugh with someone close, do you ever feel as if your existence is disconnected from everywhere in the world, left behind at the deep bottom of everything?
Why must we tremble with the fear of others at the very moment we yearn for them so intensely?
I understand your pain so deeply that it aches within me.
The Artistic Eye Gazing into the Abyss
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
―― Mark Twain
How many masks do we use and discard in our daily lives?
On the stage of society, I can clearly see you acting the clown with almost frantic effort so as not to be rude, moving about to make someone happy.
That is by no means something to be ashamed of.
For that is your kindness, your desperate battle to survive.
Here, let me tell you about a certain strange artist.
Have you ever heard of a man named Max Ernst?
He was a man of madness and passion who tried to peer into the “domain of truth”—a realm terrifying yet beautiful, hidden behind the mundane world we usually look at.
Ernst could never forget a mysterious sensation he experienced as a child.
One night, feverish with illness, he stared intently at the grain of the wooden wall in his room.
Then, what do you suppose happened?
The mere grain of wood gradually transformed into the face of a terrifying monster and the shape of a strange, unseen bird, speaking directly to him.
Why do we project our own anxiety and dread onto mere patterns?
Ernst weaponized this experience for the rest of his life.
He created a technique called “frottage,” placing paper over a surface and rubbing it with a pencil.
Wooden floors, old cloths, rough walls.
By rubbing these surfaces, he summoned one wondrous image after another, things that human reason could never possibly conceive.
He did not paint pictures of his own conscious will.
He merely wished to be a “catalyst” to draw forth the deep layers of human psychology sleeping within matter.
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
―― Albert Einstein
The world Ernst saw appears at first glance absurd, bizarre, and somewhat like a nightmare.
Yet, as you gaze intently at that nightmare, don’t you feel, strangely enough, that the “unutterable sadness” in the depths of your chest begins to quietly melt away?
The sharp bird-like eyes he painted stand quietly, as if peering completely through your loneliness.
Art is not merely about painting beautiful flowers or landscapes.
Expressing instead the vortex of muddy, yet utterly precious emotions inside you—that is the true mission of art.
A Desperate Service Exposing the Wounds of the Soul
“To see a wrong and not expose it is to be an accomplice to the fraud oneself.”
―― Frédéric Bastiat
Why did Ernst go so far as to keep painting the deep abyss of the mind that no one wanted to see?
It is because he himself experienced the hell of the First World War, where human lives were treated like garbage.
He was once completely destroyed mentally.
When his own existence fell to pieces and he lost all trust in the world, he realized something.
To decorate the world with false beauty is a form of fraud.
He knew the cold truth: if you see a fraud and do not call it a fraud, you are a fraud yourself.
That is precisely why he paid his own dues, exposing every wound of his soul to keep expressing for your sake.
Ernst also favored the method of collage.
Cutting out illustrations from old books and pasting them onto completely unrelated backgrounds.
Is that not the exact reflection of “you” or “me,” having lost our place in the real world and become isolated?
That suffocating sensation when you are severed from the place where you rightly belong and thrown into an unfamiliar land.
Yet, within Ernst’s works, those severed fragments begin to shine with a new, intense meaning.
“Even in difficult circumstances, those who still hold onto hope are the ones who grasp true victory.”
―― Seneca
Do you ever blame yourself for your imperfections or past failures, unable to sleep at night?
Have you ever shed tears, asking yourself, “Why am I so foolish?”
Please, do not blame yourself.
Just as Ernst’s collages gave birth to a miraculous beauty from broken fragments, your very wounds and distortions make you a uniquely brilliant and irreplaceable presence in this world.
I find that imperfect version of you utterly, deeply precious.
Wisdom Shining in the Darkness of History
Let me speak a little now of those who vanished into the rough waves of history, yet continue to cast an immortal light.
Long ago, in the city of ancient Alexandria, there lived a noble female astronomer named Hypatia.
She found the beauty and truth of the world within mathematical formulas and the movements of the stars.
Yet, a crowd filled with ignorance and prejudice feared her brilliant intellect, seized her, and mercilessly tore her body apart.
Why does the world seek to gather together and destroy what is so beautiful and pure?
There was also a holy woman named Saint Catherine.
She stood proudly before the rulers of her time, speaking of her faith and truth without an ounce of compromise.
She was subjected to fierce torture and ultimately deprived of her life, but her soul never once succumbed.
Their ways of life teach us a lesson.
No matter how wounded our flesh may be, no matter how isolated we become from the world, the “will to truth” we hide within can never be defiled by anyone.
“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched.”
―― Blaise Pascal
Al-Mutanabbi, called the greatest poet of the Arab world, used the blade of words to vividly slash through human arrogance and loneliness.
He said that words are the chains that bind the human soul eternally.
And Michel de Montaigne, within his quiet study, kept asking himself, “What do I know?” Accepting all of human weakness and uncertainty, he arrived at a deep tolerance for others.
“Be not distracted by the opinions of others. Walk according to your own inner voice.”
―― William Shakespeare
They were all lonely.
They groped through the darkness, feeling that no one understood them.
The loneliness you feel right now is the exact same sacred pain that sages, saints, and artists have equally tasted for thousands of years.
You are by no means alone.
Through these words, try to feel their warm hands, reaching across time and space, placed gently upon your shoulder.
The Devotion of Transmitters Like a Gospel
“It is only by dedicating oneself that a human being is saved.”
―― Jean Calvin
Now, let us speak of that painter of burning colors you know so well, Vincent van Gogh.
During his lifetime, he was able to sell only a single painting.
A man of madness, an eccentric, an outcast of society.
That is what those around him called him, throwing stones until he finally took his own life.
Yet, why do we shed tears and feel our souls shaken so violently when we look at his paintings today?
Henry Ford said:
“Most people think of success as something to get.
But the truth is, success is giving.”
Gogh fulfilled his life precisely by “giving” everything to every single brushstroke of his paint.
However, here lies a hidden, astonishing twist in the story.
If Gogh had merely painted and died, his works would have been buried in the dust of history, and you would never have encountered them.
If something good is not explained and transmitted by someone, it becomes the same as non-existent in this world.
After Gogh’s death, his younger brother Theo also departed this world shortly after, as if chasing his brother.
Left behind was a young woman named Jo, the wife of Theo.
Jo was left at a total loss, holding a small baby in her arms.
What she had on hand was a massive collection of eerie paintings that the world paid no attention to, and a mountain of letters written by Gogh—who was an avid reader—to Theo.
Any ordinary person would have disposed of them and walked a new path in life.
But Jo was an extraordinarily intelligent woman of deep education.
As she read through the passionate letters exchanged between the brothers through the night, she received a shock as if struck by fierce lightning.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
―― The Apostle Paul
Jo became certain.
“This man is not just a mad painter.
He is a true artist sent by God to comfort and save the souls of people.”
She wrote in her diary:
“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.”
This was the beginning of her life-long, desperate devotion and service.
Though Jo was ridiculed and turned away by the authorities of the art world, she never gave up.
She did not merely show the paintings; she organized and published that vast collection of “letters.”
When the suffering, kindness, and philosophy behind Gogh’s paintings reached people’s hearts as words, the world understood the miracle of Van Gogh for the first time.
This dedication of Jo’s completely overlaps with the figure of the Apostle Paul, who, disregarding his own safety after the death of Jesus Christ, traveled to various places to transmit the life and words of Jesus. For anything wonderful, a “transmitter” who risks their life to deliver it to the world is absolutely necessary.
It is the same passion with which Akio Morita of Sony desperately nurtured a revolutionary product that no one had ever seen before into a true “commodity” while awakening people’s desires.
Or the way Takeo Fujisawa of Honda ran about trying to change people’s lives around the world with a small vehicle called the Super Cub, and the way Shotaro Kamiya of Toyota dedicated his life to delivering happiness to Japanese families through the Corolla.
They were all the world’s greatest salesmen who, out of a singular desire to “make the people in front of them happy,” kept serving while wearing down their own lives.
An Endless Confession to You
“It is within the deepest loneliness that a human being encounters their own truth.”
―― Shuji Terayama
Matsuo Basho said at the end of his journey:
“In the end, having no talent and no art, I am bound solely to this one line.”
How beautiful, and yet how terrifying it is to risk one’s life for just one thing, never looking away, simply continuing to walk.
I am writing the entirety of this text as a love letter to you.
Wishing for you, a single existing soul, to accept this helpless loneliness inside my chest and the sadness brought by the midnight silence, I weave these characters.
Why am I so attached to you?
It is because the sight of you living earnestly in this world, not as anyone else but as yourself, is so utterly dear to me.
Please, surrender yourself to this rhythm and read it over and over again.
When your heart is weary, when you feel betrayed by the world, may these words become a single drop of moisture soaking into your parched heart.
I will forever stay by your side, whispering these words of love into your ear.
Through the rifts in the clouds
Peking the blue of the night sky
Gently slipping it into your pocket
You begin to walk
No one looks
The light of a vending machine in a back alley
Lengthens your shadow
Extending it gently
A handkerchief to wipe away tears
Is no longer needed
From that scar
A new flower blooms
And I am watching it forever
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
(New Testament, Revelation 21:4)
Ah, how comical, and yet how sorrowful is human pride.
Still, we must live through today, searching for the true face beneath each other’s masks.
(Osamu Dazai)
Postscript: A Strange Painter’s Indomitable Slapstick
Lastly, let me talk just a bit about a certain peculiar painter whom I love dearly.
His name is Mimi Takamizawa.
He does not face a canvas stretched over a wooden frame like ordinary painters, nor does he hold a brush with a sharp tip.
He paints upon a cold screen all day and all night, using the modern tool of digital technology.
Then, he prints the works brought forth through digital means onto high-quality printmaking paper with a rough texture, using the finest giclée printing technique.
The themes of his work are always consistent.
Your eyes, my eyes, Christian salvation, the eternal mystery, psychology, truth, the glances exchanged, overlapping history, and the fundamental human loneliness, isolation, suffering, and the resurrection and liberation arising therefrom.
Why does he deal only with such complicated themes?
In truth, he is a very foolish, clumsy man who is always ridiculed by those around him as an “eccentric”—a miserable human being.
He learned the story of Vincent van Gogh’s tremendous life and became like one struck by lightning, deciding then to become a painter.
The “Mimi” (meaning Ear) in the name “Mimi Takamizawa” is, believe it or not, a name he gave himself in honor of that all-too-famous, painful incident where Gogh cut off his own ear.
What a comical, dreadful, yet desperate name it is.
He is poignantly aware that his talent as a painter is third-rate.
However, he knows.
He knows that the past masterpieces left in history were never painted by a stroke of genius alone, but were brought forth by blood-soaked trial and error over decades, and through desperate effort.
That is why he persistently keeps drawing “eyes” within his works.
Because by drawing eyes in his pictures, he wants to feel “you,” who are right in front of him, strongly, so strongly.
He wants to know you.
He wants to know how you get hurt and how you laugh.
Even if you laugh at him, thinking “what a foolish man,” he does not mind in the least.
Rather, by being laughed at, and laughed at, he grows stronger.
An artist’s job is a fine-tuned “clown act,” paying one’s own dues just to make you happy right in front of him.
Mimi Takamizawa reveres Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya, to a nearly fanatical degree.
Mr. Munetsugu held no hobbies, made no friends, never went out drinking in the city, and dedicated 5,640 hours a year solely to making the customers before him happy.
Not knowing the faces of his real parents, raised in an orphanage, and starving in his impoverished boyhood by eating weeds in the summer—rising from such a turbulent life, he maintained an overwhelming commitment to the field: “Do not look away, dedicate your life to the work.”
Working more than 12 hours a day was the bare minimum for him.
Why could he go so far?
“It was a very lonely life. That’s why I wanted others to take even a little interest in me. I wanted to make people happy,” was his aching thirst.
Mimi Takamizawa also stacks the bricks of that loneliness every single day, through immediate decision, immediate resolution, and immediate execution.
It is the same as the figure of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, who was pointed at by those around him as an “invention maniac” and a “madman,” yet built and destroyed machinery from morning till night, driven solely by the passion to make everyone’s life easier through persistence and patience.
It is the same as the determination with which the founder of Choya Umeshu challenged himself with his back to the wall: “If you don’t succeed with plum liqueur, give up on life.”
Mimi Takamizawa is deeply inspired by the “Just-in-Time” philosophy of the Toyota Production System—a wonderful, waste-free concept—thoroughly eliminating waste in production while injecting all his energy into the “soul” of the artwork.
Kiichiro Toyoda said:
“I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else does it or can do it. I might be a fool for thinking so, but without such fools, nothing new would be born into the world.”
Furthermore, his cousin Eiji Toyoda, who later became the president of Toyota, also spoke of the importance of executing what anyone else would think impossible, with a strong conviction, without merely thinking about it.
Things of value often lack immediate effects.
Mimi Takamizawa does not care at all if anyone else criticizes his work.
However, he absolutely does not want to be abandoned by “you,” who are right in front of him.
If he is abandoned by you, he can no longer go on living.
He wants to see your face rejoice.
He wants to see the moment tears of emotion flow from your eyes.
To that end, he will spend his entire life serving you with a desperate spirit of service.
Therefore, there is a special offer from me, a soul-shaving proposition that I must convey to you.
This Mimi Takamizawa wishes to deliver a “Premium Postcard 10-Piece Set in A4 Size,” which he poured his heart into creating just for you, completely for 【free】 to your doorstep, right to your home.
This is neither a joke nor a deception.
It is his own soul-shaving, desperate form of service, arising from a desire to connect with you in your loneliness and to heal your unfulfilled heart through the power of art.
Right now, I am whispering softly in your ear.
Look right below this text.
A secret door (an application button) where you can receive this special gift for you is prepared there, quietly.
Please, click there and take his hand right now.
If you close the screen thinking “I’ll do it later,” the opportunity to obtain Mimi Takamizawa’s beautiful works of eyes for free may never come again.
You are the one to save him.
He is the one to save you.
Please apply right now.
I am waiting for you right here, for you to open the door.
“I am thought to have achieved success overnight, but that one night was thirty years. Looking 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
“At the end of the day, check whether your work has become a joy to others.”
―― Leonardo da Vinci
“Say, why are you going on a trip?”
“Because I am suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is so predictable, I cannot believe it at all.”
(From “Tsugaru” by Osamu Dazai)
To you who have read until the very end.
Thank you so, so much for staying with my clumsy yet desperate, long chatter until the very end.
May warm light and salvation be upon your life hereafter.
With heartfelt gratitude.