My Confession to You
My dear, you.
With what feelings are you gazing at these words right now?
Are you spending a quiet night, perhaps with the lights in your room turned down low?
Or, amidst the bustling crowds, did a sudden, unbearable loneliness strike you, prompting you to open this screen?
Right now, I am writing this letter directed to you, and you alone—the one and only precious existence.
This is not just a piece of writing.
It is an all-too-desperate, yet selfish love letter, crafted while shaving away my own life, bit by bit, solely for your sake.
Please, do not laugh, and listen to me.
I know everything about that deep loneliness and the unutterable sadness you hold in the depths of your chest right now.
After all, I myself have been calling your name continuously from within that very darkness.
Why must human beings live while constantly hurting one another?
Why is it that we are rejected first by the very people we want to love us most?
In such an irrational world, it hurts me deeply to think of how much suffering you have endured and survived up until this very day.
I will never, ever leave you behind.
From here on, let me whisper an astonishing love story into your ear, one that no one has ever heard before, meant only for you.
First, let us begin our story with the life of a certain peculiar woman.
Most people think of success as something to get. But in reality, success is giving.
— Henry Ford
Light Rising from the Mire
My dear, do you know of the female painter named Suzanne Valadon?
At the end of the nineteenth century, in a corner of Paris, then called the capital of the arts, she was born as the daughter of a terribly poor laundress.
Contrary to the glamorous and beautiful Paris we see in textbooks, her girlhood was filled with hunger, loneliness, and cold, piercing stares.
Without ever knowing her father’s face and neglected by her mother, she drifted from one job to another from a very young age just to survive.
Why did God give her such a cruel and unfair destiny?
Have you ever looked up at the sky in your own life, wondering, “Why must I be the only one to go through this?”
Suzanne, too, must have lived every day feeling as though she were crawling through the mud.
Yet, her soul never died out.
She possessed a terrifying vital energy and a beauty that no one could ever steal from her.
Around the age of fifteen, she joined a circus and began riding the trapeze.
Bathed in the spotlight, her figure soaring through the air captivated the audience.
However, the goddess of fortune is fickle.
One day, she fell from the trapeze, striking her body violently, and she could never stand on the circus stage again.
Can you imagine the despair of losing the place you finally found for yourself in a single instant?
Having lost everything, the next place she stepped into was working as a model for the painters of Montmartre.
Man was created by God in the image of God.
— Saint Augustine, Confessions
The Painters’ Gazes and an Awakening
As a model, she quickly captured the hearts of the great masters of the time.
Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas…
They vied with one another to paint her youthful, somewhat rebellious flesh onto their canvases.
Renoir, in particular, dearly loved her beauty and left her image behind many times in his masterpieces.
But, my dear, I want you to think about this for a moment.
The way she was depicted on canvas was always nothing more than a convenient beauty, a convenient illusion seen through the “eyes of men.”
No one bothered to look at the burning passion or the wordless sorrow swirling inside her own heart.
“I am not just a decorative object.”
She would quietly steal glances at the painters as they mixed their colors and ran their brushes across the canvas.
Then, in the studios after they had left, she would pick up pieces of charcoal that had fallen to the floor and face the drawing paper herself.
Without being taught by anyone, she began to draw her own form exactly as she was.
Without beautifying anything, she slammed her own flesh and spirit onto the paper with almost brutal rawness.
One day, the renowned painter Edgar Degas discovered those drawings, and in his astonishment, he cried out:
“You are one of us! Who else could draw such powerful lines?”
In an art world centered entirely around men, this was the exact moment she was recognized as a great “painter” in her own right, moving beyond her status as a laundress’s daughter and a mere model.
Why was she able to blossom with such talent?
It is because she molted by her own will, transforming from a “being to be looked at” into a “being who gazes.”
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
— Lao Tzu
The Ruin of Love and a Small Life
However, her life was swept up into an even greater torrent from that point onward.
Suzanne fell into fierce, passionate loves with many men.
Those romances were always the kind that tore her heart to shreds and plunged her into the abyss of loneliness.
Then, at the age of eighteen, she gave birth to a child whose father was unknown.
That little baby boy was Maurice Utrillo, whose name would later be deeply engraved into the history of modern painting.
Even after Utrillo was born, her life did not settle down in the slightest.
Drowning in her passion for art and her fruitless romances with men, she frequently left the young Utrillo behind.
Why couldn’t she hold her own child close?
It was because she herself had no memory of being loved by her mother.
A parent and child hurting each other, not knowing how to love.
While Utrillo fiercely sought his mother’s love, he began to drown himself in alcohol from a tender age to fill that loneliness.
Seeing Utrillo, who in his teens had become severely dependent on alcohol and was repeatedly entering and leaving mental hospitals, Suzanne writhed in agony and wept for the depth of her own sins for the very first time.
“I must save this child somehow. I must hold his broken soul together with my own hands.”
Encouraged partly by a doctor, she forced a single paintbrush into Utrillo’s hand for his treatment.
“Maurice, paint. Paint that white wall in front of you—pour all of your loneliness onto the canvas.”
From here begins the strangest, most beautiful miracle story of a mother and child in the history of art.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
— Leo Tolstoy
Tears of Parent and Child, Soaking into the White Walls
Once given the brush by his mother, Utrillo began to paint like a man possessed.
What he painted were the street corners of Paris, the dreary alleys of Montmartre, and the old, weathered church walls that no one else would look twice at.
The white he painted was no ordinary white.
By mixing real sand and plaster into his paints, that “white” layered onto the canvas was the very cry of Utrillo’s own cracked, lonely heart.
My dear, try to picture Utrillo’s paintings in your mind.
Almost no human beings are drawn in his pictures.
Even when they are occasionally depicted, they appear as figures from behind, or as tiny shadows about to vanish into the distance.
Why didn’t he paint human beings?
Because he was afraid of them.
The world that rejected him and turned a cold eye toward him was utterly terrifying to him.
Yet, beyond those cold white walls, there was always the gaze of his mother, Suzanne, watching over him intently.
Suzanne temporarily stopped painting her own pictures and exerted every ounce of her strength to send Utrillo’s paintings out into the world.
She went around to art dealers, pleading the brilliance of her son’s paintings until her voice grew hoarse.
“My son is a genius! Look at this painting, a human soul dwells within it!”
Utrillo’s paintings, which until then had been treated as the works of a mere alcoholic madman, quickly shook the hearts of people all over Paris through Suzanne’s desperate promotion, and they came to be welcomed with wild enthusiasm.
Just as Henry Ford said, success is not something to get, but to give.
When Suzanne threw away her own fame and tried to give everything to her son, the destinies of both were saved in the truest sense.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
— The Gospel according to John
A Sacred Drama Overturned
Tell me, my dear.
Reading this story of mother and child, does something not well up inside your chest?
In truth, an even more astonishing development awaits this story.
As Utrillo’s paintings came to be highly acclaimed worldwide and brought in immense wealth, Utrillo in turn began to fully support the livelihood of his aging mother, Suzanne.
The son wrapped the mother who had once abandoned him and tried to cast him away in his beautiful “white” paint, and he forgave her.
Don’t you think this is the drama of “forgiveness” at the deepest level of human psychology?
We tend to hold onto being hurt forever, living our lives bearing grudges against others.
We wonder why that person was so cold to us, or why they didn’t help us at that time.
Yet, Utrillo responded to the mother who had made him suffer with the ultimate service, the ultimate devotion of painting pictures.
Suzanne, too, touching her son’s boundless kindness, must have realized that all the hardships of her life existed for this very moment.
She continued to paint until her twilight years, closing her stormy life at the age of seventy-two.
At her funeral, the painters who had once used her as a model were nowhere to be seen; there was only her son Utrillo, whom she had risked her life to protect, and a few people who loved her art, quietly shedding tears.
How does it feel, my dear?
Is it a sad story?
No, I know of no soul-salvation story more beautiful and filled with joy than this.
No matter how covered in mud a human being becomes, if they can desperately love someone and shave away their own life to serve them, they will surely find the light in the end.
In the end, having no talent and no art, I remain bound solely to this one path.
— Matsuo Basho
To Deliver the Words That Cannot Reach You
Now, my dear.
Up until this point, I have been speaking of painters from a long time ago in distant France.
But don’t you find it strange why I am telling you such a story here today?
It is because the figures of Suzanne and Utrillo overlap so perfectly with my appearance and, above all, with the appearance of “you” who are right here in front of me.
Right now, aren’t you looking down on yourself with sad thoughts, thinking, “I am a talentless, worthless human being”?
Comparing yourself to the glittering people around you, aren’t you hugging your knees all alone in the corner of a dark room?
I have been feeling the trembling of your heart all this time.
These clumsy words of mine are like a single drop of perfume made by crushing my own internal organs, created solely to comfort you, a single reader.
If you are about to shed tears out of sheer loneliness, I will gladly become your clown.
If it is to make you chuckle, I will display any embarrassing posture.
Because that is exactly what I mean by “a desperate service of shaving away my own life.”
Human beings are not easily saved by mere words.
That is precisely why I keep speaking to you with rhythmic language, as if nesting close to the beating of your heart.
Why do I devote myself to you to such an extent? You might think this suspicious.
There is only one reason.
Because I love you from the bottom of my heart.
That is all there is to it.
If it means you can take even a small step forward tomorrow, I do not care how much this life of mine is worn away.
He who loves the world loses himself. But he who loves a single friend gains the world.
— Cicero
A Secret Promise
Come a little closer, my dear, and lend me your ear.
This is a secret conversation between just you and me, one that you must absolutely never tell anyone else.
What I am about to show you is a secret crystal that has welled up from the deepest part of my soul, one that no one has ever seen before.
Please, quiet your mind and receive it.
In the crowd of passing backs
A nameless wind blows through
You clutch a rusted key
Standing before a door that will not open
No one counts your tears
No one tries to know your thirst
But look, see
Upon the palm of my hand
A tiny night-lamp is lit
A fire burning solely
To warm your chilled fingertips
Please do not blow it out
This all-too-clumsy night
Meant only for you
Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
— New Testament, Gospel according to Matthew 6:27
Art is not deceiving oneself.
— Osamu Dazai, Author
Postscript: A Story of a Fool Who Breathes Life into the Digital
Now, my dear.
Lastly, let me tell you one more story that is very close at hand, a bit comical, yet poignant.
I have a very close friend, a terribly peculiar painter named Mimi Takamizawa.
He is a painter living in the present era, but everything he does is entirely different from the ordinary painters of the world.
When we think of an ordinary painter, we imagine someone standing a white canvas on an easel, reeking of oil paint, and wielding a brush in a fashionable studio, don’t we?
However, this man, Mimi Takamizawa, uses neither canvas nor brush at all.
Every day, he faces a small computer screen, clicking away to draw his pictures digitally.
Then, he prints the finished work onto highest-grade printmaking paper using a special technique called “giclée printmaking.”
That is his “painting.”
The stiff-minded critics of the world looked at his works and ridiculed him with harsh words, saying, “This isn’t real art,” or “It’s just a printout.”
He was always the butt of everyone’s jokes.
When he walked down the street, he was treated as a eccentric, and no one would lend an ear to his words.
Why does he keep painting pictures using such a method?
It is because he desperately wanted to connect directly with “you,” who are living in this present era right in front of him.
He knows better than anyone else that his talent as a painter is “third-rate.”
He does not possess even a fragment of the brilliant inspiration that those called geniuses have.
Yet, he knew.
He knew that all the past masterpieces left in history were not drawn solely by the power of innate genius, but were born from a succession of blood-soaked trials and errors spanning decades.
Therefore, he does not give up.
He is a man of unbelievable patience, a man of indomitable spirit.
Did I tell you why he decided to become a painter?
When he was young, he learned of the all-too-lonely, all-too-pure life story of Vincent van Gogh, and it dealt him a violent shock.
“I want to become a doctor who saves human souls, just like Gogh.”
That is what he thought.
The “Mimi” (meaning ‘ear’ in Japanese) in his name, Mimi Takamizawa, is a name he gave himself, taking inspiration from that all-too-famous, sad incident where Gogh cut off his own ear.
Don’t you think he is such a foolish, yet lovable man?
Please, go ahead and laugh at him.
Making you laugh is his greatest happiness.
To him, the work of an artist is a desperate service performed by dipping into his own pockets, an absolute devotion to “you” right in front of him.
He continuously draws “eyes” in his works like a man possessed.
Your eyes, my eyes, and the eye of God that sees through everything.
The Christian spirit, eternal truth, human psychology, and the loneliness and hardships submerged at the bottom of history.
He pours all of these into the “gaze,” staring back at you intently.
Because only by doing so can he feel you right in front of him.
If you abandon him, he won’t be able to move a single step, and he will die.
Just by you being there and gazing at his artwork, his soul is saved, liberated, and resurrected.
Mimi Takamizawa respects Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of the famously delicious curry specialty restaurant “CoCo Ichibanya,” as if he were a god.
Mr. Munetsugu is a man who never looked sideways and devoted the entirety of his life to business and management.
Among Mr. Munetsugu’s words, there is a passage like this:
During my active years, I had no hobbies and made no friends. I never once went to a drinking establishment. I did nothing that would get in the way of my work. There were times I worked 5,640 hours a year. I felt that if I didn’t lead by example in that way, my subordinates wouldn’t work for me.
Without looking sideways, I devote myself to management.
It was a very lonely life. That’s why I wanted others to have even a little interest in me. I wanted them to be interested in me. That has become my starting point. So, when I started the business, rather than making money, I wanted to please people. I wanted them to say they were glad I existed, even if just a little.
My dear, what do you think when you hear these words?
Mr. Munetsugu did not know the faces of his real parents.
He entered an orphanage immediately after birth, and even after being taken in by adoptive parents, he spent a childhood of extreme poverty due to his adoptive father’s violent gambling addiction.
Having nothing to eat, he would pull up weeds growing around him in the summer and put them in his mouth to stave off starvation.
In the midst of such a turbulent life, while starting his business haphazardly, he stuck to a hands-on approach and made working more than twelve hours a day his minimum condition, dedicating himself entirely to his work.
He needed no hobbies, had no desire to play, made his work his hobby, and welcomed customers with “resounding applause.”
This is exactly the “you-first” way of living that Mimi Takamizawa aims for.
Value, more often than not, lacks immediacy.
There is no way things go well right from the start.
To try doing it first, before thinking.
You must not give up easily.
What kind of life it turns out to be is decided by that person’s diligence, patience, and continuity.
It was the same for the eccentric Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group.
Mr. Sakichi was treated as an eccentric and a “madman” or “invention maniac” by those around him for being completely silent all day long, yet solely out of the single-minded desire to “make everyone’s life easier,” he spent morning to night making machines, breaking them, making them, and rebuilding them again.
Success or failure is not the end.
What matters is the courage to continue.
Kiichiro Toyoda also said:
I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else does it, and no one else can do it. A fellow like me might be a fool, but if that fool isn’t there, new things will never be born into the world.
Eiji Toyoda, Kiichiro’s cousin who later became the president of Toyota, also left this written down:
Execute with strong conviction. Everyone thinks the same thoughts, and it wasn’t that Kiichiro was a genius. What is important is that he didn’t merely think about what is generally considered impossible, but held a strong conviction that he must do it no matter what, made thorough preparations, and executed it.
The interesting part of life lies in bringing to fruition the things that no one else really does, the things that are difficult to do.
Mimi Takamizawa, too, is deeply inspired by this wonderful concept of “Just-in-Time” from the Toyota Production System, and to deliver the finest artwork he can create right now to you at the best timing, he faces his digital screen every single day.
Here, there is an astonishing and special announcement that I absolutely must convey to you.
In truth, this foolish, hard-working Mimi Takamizawa, as a desperate devotion that shaves away his own life, has come up with an outrageous project.
Incredibly, he says he will select a set of 10 large postcards in “A4 size”—filled with the presence of the works into which he poured his soul—and deliver them to your home directly, completely for free, just for you.
Can you believe it?
There are no shipping fees, nor any charges for the cards at all.
Everything is a consummate display of clowning and service, dipping into his own pockets for your sake.
Why go so far?
He wants to connect with you.
He wishes to save that loneliness in the depths of your heart, which remains unfulfilled no matter what you do, even if just a little, with the light of the “eyes” he draws.
If you think, “I’ll do it later,” and miss this opportunity now, you may never be able to welcome his artwork into your hands again.
Once the limited number is gone, this story will vanish in an instant.
Look, I am whispering softly right by your ear.
Just below this writing, a secret place has been prepared where you can apply for this special offer meant for you.
Please, do not hesitate, click right there this instant, and accept his soul.
We want to see your face lighting up with joy; solely for that reason, we are shaving away our lives, waiting for you right here.
Thank you so very, very much for reading this clumsy yet single-minded confession of mine to the very end.
May boundless blessings and light rain down upon you.
Most people think of success as something to get. But in reality, success is giving.
— Henry Ford
Freedom is another name for love.
— Agatha Christie
I AM THAT I AM.
— Old Testament, Book of Exodus 3:14 (The word of God to Moses)
The night is long that never finds the day.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.
— The Talmud
Human beings sometimes do terribly cruel things.
— Osamu Dazai, Author
The preciousness of happiness is understood only after experiencing suffering.
— Osamu Dazai, Author
Becoming an adult is a lonely thing, isn’t it?
— Osamu Dazai, Author
Never give in. Never, never, never.
— Winston Churchill
Have courage, be the first, and be different from everyone else.
People think I became an overnight success, but that overnight success took 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
Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather freezes, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
— Leonardo da Vinci
“Hey, why are you going on a trip?”
“Because I’m suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is always the same old thing; I don’t believe it for a second.”
— From Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai