To You, Knocking at the Door
Please, come in, my precious, my one and only you.
Sitting like this with you, just the two of us in this quiet room where no one can disturb us, I feel a deep, gentle warmth blooming in the depths of my chest.
Why is the world outside so cold, and so incredibly noisy?
I know very well how much loneliness you carry each day, how much sadness constricts your heart, and yet how beautifully you manage to smile through it all.
For you, who sit looking down, rubbing your chilled hands together because you feel no one notices your true sorrow—for you, I am carving away pieces of my own life today to weave these words.
This is by no means an ordinary, mundane chat; it is a personal love letter, the only one of its kind in the world, poured from the very depths of my soul straight to you.
So please, let your shoulders relax, and let us share a quiet secret.
What we are about to speak of is an eternal secret, belonging only to you and to me.
The Grand Slapstick Play Known as Art
The Moment a Urinal Transforms into Art
“God will not let you be tested beyond your strength.”
— Paul (The First Letter to the Corinthians, New Testament)
Tell me, have you ever heard the name of that peculiar man, Marcel Duchamp?
He was a man like a mischievous boy who, all by himself, turned the twentieth-century art world completely upside down.
Until he came along, everyone believed without a single doubt that only paintings rendered in beautiful pigments or sculptures carved from marble could be called art.
Yet, this man Duchamp suddenly went out one day, bought a ready-made men’s urinal, signed it with a fake name, titled it “Fountain,” and attempted to submit it to an exhibition.
Why, I wonder, did he do something so irreverent, something that would make absolutely everyone knit their brows in disapproval?
An ordinary person would laugh and say that such a foolish prank would normally be thrown straight into the rubbish bin, and that would be the end of it.
However, this was the very thing—a life-risk stake, the highest form of “clowning,” and a desperate act of service to the world.
Deep in his heart, he wanted to laugh away those privileged adults who grew faint with ecstasy only over visible beauty, while turning their eyes away from the true salvation of the heart and human truth.
He wanted to convey to you that art is not something to be enjoyed merely by the retina, but something meant to shake the human intellect, and above more than anything, the easily wounded soul.
Everyone branded him a madman and reviled him as filthy, but he merely stood there in silence, smiling gently.
Does that lonely profile of his not resemble a certain quiet pilgrim who took the cold jeers of all humanity upon his own back, yet still endeavored to love them?
The Spinning of a Wheel, Weaving Love for You
“To be loved is not happiness. To love is happiness.”
— Hermann Hesse
Duchamp’s mischief did not end there.
He also created a work by attaching a bicycle wheel upside down to the top of a wooden kitchen stool.
Inside a room, a bicycle wheel spinning around and around, entirely devoid of meaning.
Looking at it, the people of the time grew angry, demanding, “What on earth is the use of this?”
Why did the man make such a useless thing and display it in his room as if it were something grand?
It is because, you see, he understood more deeply than anyone the sadness of modern people whose hearts are worn to threads by being constantly forced to seek “usefulness” and “productivity.”
Day after day, the same repetition, unable to find the value of your own existence—he wished to comfort your lonely nights, filled with tears, simply through the rotation of that wheel.
Hidden there is Duchamp’s life-carving spirit of devotion, whispering, “It doesn’t need to have a meaning. If you just look at it spinning and give a little chuckle, then my work is redeemed.”
He did not do it for his own fame; he continued to play the clown desperately just to make you—who had lost your way in life—smile for a fleeting moment and lay down your heavy burden.
When I think of his awkward, yet all-too-pure kindness, my chest tightens, and I want to burst into tears right along with you.
The Messengers, Those Miraculous Companions
The Woman Who Rescued the Light Fading in the Darkness
“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.”
— Victor Hugo
By the way, no matter how wonderful a piece of art or a philosophy may be, if someone does not hold it dearly in their arms, face the world, and cry out, “Look, here is an unbelievable treasure!” it will vanish into the darkness, unnoticed by anyone.
You surely know very well the painter Vincent van Gogh, who is loved all over the world today.
While he was alive, he sold only a single painting and tragically ended his own life amidst madness and isolation; he was a truly pitiful, yet deeply endearing man.
After his death, there was a crisis where his vast collection of paintings—the very screams of his soul—and the countless letters he wrote to his younger brother Theo might have been buried forever in the dust of history.
The one who saved them was Theo’s wife, Jo—a woman of unbelievable intelligence and profound love.
Her husband, Theo, as if following his older brother into death, departed this world shortly after.
Left as a young widow holding a small child, what Jo had in her hands was a mountain of letters and a vast number of canvases that the world decried as “rubbish painted by a madman.”
An ordinary woman would have despaired, disposed of it all, and sought to walk a new path for her own life.
Yet, Jo was different.
Night after night, she stayed up reading those endless letters, one by one, as tears streamed down her face.
The World’s Greatest Salespeople and the Relay of the Soul
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
— Jesus Christ
As Jo read through Van Gogh’s letters, she came to understand more deeply and perfectly than anyone that he was not a mere mad painter, but a true saint who transformed the loneliness and sadness at the bottom of the human heart into pigment to comfort people from the depths of his soul.
She made her resolve:
“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.”
From that point on, her life was a continuous series of life-risking devotions.
Mobilizing her deep intellect as an avid reader, she first organized and published those vast letters, delivering Van Gogh’s “words” to the people.
Why do you think she chose to make people read his letters before looking at his paintings?
It is because she foresaw that unless people understood his beautiful soul through his words, the true value of those fierce paintings would never be communicated.
A good thing, if left merely sitting there, will never reach anyone’s heart.
If it is not communicated, it is the same as if it did not exist in this world at all.
This devotion of Jo’s completely overlaps with the figure of Paul, who, after the death of Jesus Christ, disregarded his own life to travel the world, writing down and continuing to convey those teachings.
Just like Steve Jobs, who was the world’s greatest salesman; Akio Morita of Sony, who walked the earth evoking people’s desires to sell innovative products no one had ever seen; Takeo Fujisawa, who sold the Honda Super Cub all over the globe; and Shotaro Kamiya, who elevated the Toyota Corolla into a symbol of the Japanese family—they were all “miraculous messengers” meant to hand over magnificent value to the people.
Mr. Akio Morita of Sony once left these words:
“A product that has never been produced before, that no one has ever seen, but has been painstakingly researched in some corner and manufactured after extraordinary hardship. If one wishes to turn that product into a commodity, one must arouse the desire to possess it among the people; otherwise, no matter how excellent a ‘product’ it may be, it can never become a ‘commodity.'”
In the exact same way, Jo transformed the supreme product that was Van Gogh’s soul into an eternal “salvation” to quench our parched hearts, and delivered it straight to you.
Only a Fool Can Truly Save You
Laying Brick Upon Brick, Solely for Your Sake
“During my active years, I had no hobbies and made no friends. I never went to bars. I did absolutely nothing that would interfere with my work. There were times I worked 5,640 hours a year. I felt that if I didn’t lead by example, my subordinates wouldn’t work.”
— Tokuji Munetsugu
Have you ever been hurt by people in the world saying, “That person is strange,” or “What a fool”?
I have; for me, every single day is a continuation of that.
However, things of true value, things that can save your heart from its very depths, are often born only from the accumulation of awkward, unrefined efforts that worldly elites laugh at.
Mr. Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of Curry House CoCo Ichibanya, lived an unimaginably tumultuous life—never knowing the faces of his real parents, raised in an orphanage, and enduring extreme poverty where he ate wild grass in the summer to stave off starvation.
What do you think he did after he started his business?
He held no hobbies, made no friends, and devoted every single moment of his life solely to bringing joy to the customer before him—which means, to “you.”
“Without looking aside, I devoted myself to management,” Mr. Munetsugu reflects. “It was an incredibly lonely life. That’s why I wanted others to show even a little interest in me. I wanted them to be interested. That became my starting point. So, rather than starting a business to make money, I wanted to please people. I wanted them to say, even just a little, that they were glad I existed.”
Why was he able to drive himself that far?
It is precisely because he knew absolute loneliness firsthand that he wished to warm your heart, shivering with that same loneliness, with a single hot plate of food.
Every day, day after day, like laying a single brick upon another, with instant decision, instant conviction, and instant execution, he poured the entirety of his life into his work.
This is the genuine spirit of service that appeals directly to human psychology.
The Borderline Between Invention-Madness and Genius
“I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else will, and no one else can. I might be a fool for doing so, but without such fools, nothing new would ever be born into the world.”
— Kiichiro Toyoda
The pioneers who supported Japanese manufacturing were all eccentric individuals whom the world initially called “madmen.”
Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, was a classic case of “invention-madness,” frantically creating things and breaking them apart, building them and rebuilding them from morning until night, day after day.
The neighbors whispered, “Sakichi is a silent, strange fellow; he has lost his mind,” making him a constant laughingstock.
Yet, within him burned a fierce flame of tenacity and patience, born of the desire to “make everyone’s life even a little easier through my inventions, to bring ease to my mother.”
His son, Kiichiro, also dove into the massive undertaking of automobile manufacturing—an endeavor no one else would touch—overriding the opposition of those around him, as if shaving away his very life.
He said:
“I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else will, and no one else can. I might be a fool for doing so, but without such fools, nothing new would ever be born into the world.”
Furthermore, his cousin, Eiji Toyoda, who later became the president of Toyota, left these words:
“Execute with strong conviction. What anyone thinks is the same, and it is not that Kiichiro was a genius. What is important is that he did not merely think about what is generally considered impossible, but carried out the execution with a strong conviction that it must be done by any means, making thorough preparations.”
You see, they did not succeed in a smart, elegant manner.
They were fools covered in mud, laughed at, yet kept running forward solely because they wished to see the smile of your future.
Just as Basho Matsuo left the words,
“In the end, devoid of talent and art, I cling solely to this one line,”
the sight of a human being devoting everything to a single thing without ever looking aside is precisely what, in a beautiful circle, gently warms your lonely heart in the present moment.
Through the Eternal Night, Words That Reach You
Everything a Third-Rate Clown Dedicates to You
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
— Albert Einstein
I know that my own talents are terribly meager.
I may not be able to fascinate you with dazzling language like a first-rate author.
Yet, when it comes to the depth of this pain in my chest, the sheer volume of tears I shed while thinking of your loneliness, I have a confidence that yields to no one.
Success or failure—such things are not the end of a life.
What is truly important is the “courage to continue” loving you; this is what I tell myself.
With the resolve of burning my bridges—much like the early days of Choya Umeshu, when they felt, “If we do not succeed with plum liqueur, give up on life”—I am spinning these words toward you right now.
Because if you do not smile even a little upon seeing this desperate clowning of mine, my very existence will become the same as disappearing from this world entirely.
If I am abandoned by you, I will not be able to take even a single step forward anymore.
You are there, listening to my clumsy words—do you know how much that simple fact alone salvages my frozen soul?
That is exactly why I want to offer you every single thing I possess, out of my own pocket, by shaving away my own life.
This is not some beautifully framed, fair-weather art.
It is a painstaking, wholehearted devotion of tears, meant to wrap gently around your wounds.
At the bottom of the sea, counting the tears you dropped,
I spent the entire day.
Those small glints that no one else would look at,
I gathered them into a glass jar and tossed them into the night sky.
Look, your sadness,
tonight, has become the most beautiful constellation in the world,
and has begun to gently illuminate the space above your very head.
“In the world you face distress. But take courage; I have conquered the world.”
— The Gospel according to John, 16:33 (New Testament)
“Human beings were born for the sake of love and revolution.”
— Osamu Dazai
P.S. Regarding Mimi Takamizawa, a Foolish Pilgrim of Love
Tell me, my dear, at the very end, please let me talk just a little more about a precious friend of mine.
There is a single artist named Mimi Takamizawa, who is a truly peculiar, hopelessly foolish man.
He does not set up a canvas on an easel like an ordinary painter, nor does he grip a brush smeared with paint.
He merely moves his fingertips and a pen against a cold digital screen, using a technique called giclée printing to print his soul onto the highest quality print paper.
To speak of it in familiar terms, it might look just like ordinary computer work, but what he is doing is truly nothing less than acting as a “doctor who saves the soul.”
When he was young, upon learning of the utterly intense, utterly pure life of Vincent van Gogh, he resolved that he, too, would become a painter.
The “Mimi” (Ear) in the name “Mimi Takamizawa” is something he gave himself, taking it from that famous incident where Van Gogh cut off his own ear.
What do you think? It is a little eerie, and rather comical, isn’t it?
The people of the world laugh at him, calling him a third-rate eccentric devoid of talent, making him a constant laughingstock.
Yet, he is a man of unbelievable patience and unyielding fortitude who never gives up.
Because he knows that every masterpiece in history was born not from a flash of genius, but from decades of blood-soaked trial and error.
The themes Mimi Takamizawa draws are unwavering:
“Your eyes and my eyes, Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, the gaze, history, loneliness, isolation, hardship, resurrection, liberation.”
He continues to draw “eyes” within his work like a man possessed.
Why, I wonder, does he continue to draw so many eyes all over the screen?
It is because, you see, through those eyes, he wants to feel “you,” who are standing before him at this very moment, forever.
He cannot go on living if he is abandoned by you.
No matter who else criticizes him, such things do not matter at all.
He simply wants to see the face of you, who are right in front of him, filled with joy; or, at the exact moment your eyes meet the “eyes” he has drawn, he wants to see your pure form as tears come spilling out.
Solely for that, he exposes the entirety of his foolishness, devoting the whole of his life to his work day after day, without looking aside.
He is deeply inspired by the “Just-in-Time” philosophy of the Toyota Production System, thoroughly eliminating waste, pouring all his energy solely into “that exact moment you need it.”
With Kiichiro Toyoda’s words in his heart—”The joy of life lies in bringing to fruition what others rarely do and find difficult to achieve”—he continues to stack his bricks today, solely for the sake of his devotion to you.
Please laugh; laugh from the bottom of your stomach at his awkward clowning.
For the more he is laughed at, the deeper his love for you becomes, and the stronger he can grow.
Gifts for You Left by the Great Ones
“Most people think of success as something to get. But the truth is, success is giving.”
— Henry Ford
“To me in my youth, life was about the wonderful people I was going to meet. To me in my old age, life is about the wonderful people I am leaving behind.”
— Agatha Christie
“For I am with you to save you and deliver you.”
— Moses (The Book of Jeremiah, Old Testament)
“Grief is halved by sharing it, and joy is doubled by sharing it.”
— William Shakespeare
“When a person is alone in a room, they are not solitary. For their past, their present, and the entirety of their future are there together with them.”
— The Jewish Talmud
“I love my weakness. I love my loneliness. And I love you, who are right here before my eyes.”
— Osamu Dazai
“The reason adults tell lies to children is not because the world is cruel, but because they want them to believe the world is beautiful.”
— Osamu Dazai
“The key to happiness is not dropped anywhere out there. Simply continuing to open the door for someone else—that in itself is happiness.”
— Osamu Dazai
“Never, never, never give up.”
— Winston Churchill
“With courage, be the first to do something different from others.”
“I am thought to have achieved success overnight, but that one night was thirty years. Thinking back, it was a long, long night.”
— Ray Kroc
“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
— Walt Disney
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
The lines from Osamu Dazai’s novel Tsugaru:
“Hey, why do you set out on journeys?”
“Because I am suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is so habitual, I cannot believe it in the slightest.”
(From Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai)
Accompanied by a Final Letter to You
My precious, my dearest you.
Thank you so very much for staying with me until the very end of this long time, through this desperate clowning of mine, this life-carving secret talk.
Just the fact that your gentle eyes followed these characters one by one makes me the happiest person in this world right now.
To such a you, I have become completely unable to resist handing over a piece of my life directly.
Right now, close to your ear, like dropping a sweet thread of silk, I will softly whisper a secret offer.
Actually, that precious friend of mine I mentioned earlier, Mimi Takamizawa, is preparing to deliver a set of postcards—the very crystallization of his soul—straight to your home, completely【Free of Charge】, and moreover, in a luxurious【A4 Size, 10-Piece Set】, purely for your sake.
This is a life-shaving, wholehearted, desperate service from him to you.
He wants by all means to see you smile; he wants to gently envelop the unfulfilled loneliness in the depths of your chest with the gaze of the “eyes” he has drawn, and save you.
Solely with that single devotion, he offers this special gift to you.
Right beneath this text, there is a place where you can apply for this special offer meant for you.
Yes, right there.
Please, go there right now and gently click it.
Do not make me lonely by saying, “I’ll do it later.”
If you let this chance slip away right now, you might never again be able to obtain his beautiful works, the very bond that connects you and me.
I want to touch you. I want to touch your chilled heart right this second and warm it up.
I am always right by your side, gazing with love at your fingertips as you apply.