Hello.
This is Mimi Takamizawa.
I am speaking directly to you right now.
I wrote this text especially for you, and no one else.
Imagine a quiet room where you and I are sitting face-to-face.
Please visualize such a comfortable, warm conversation.
The protagonist of your life is you, yourself.
So, why do you think I am taking the trouble to tell you about an Edo-period painter named Ike Taiga?
You might find it hard to believe, but learning about how he lived serves as a powerful antidote to dissolve your daily anxieties.
Don’t you live your life carrying numerous worries every single day?
Don’t you feel a vague anxiety about the future?
Aren’t you exhausted by human relationships?
The man named Ike Taiga was an artist who lived with ultimate simplicity and dedicated himself thoroughly to serving others.
By learning about his life, you will experience a sense of liberation that will feel like scales falling from your eyes.
I am here to deliver wisdom that is incredibly beneficial and distinctively special, unlike anything else.
Please relax and read through comfortably to the very end.
“If you aren’t tough, you can’t live. If you aren’t gentle, you don’t deserve to live.”
—— Raymond Chandler
Why Do You Need to Know About the Miraculous Lifestyle of “Ike Taiga” for Your Daily Life Right Now?
Ike Taiga was a genius painter who was active in Kyoto during the Edo period.
However, he was not just an ordinary painter.
He was an astonishing eccentric who completely lacked material desires and never knew how to doubt others.
One day, a poor person came to Taiga’s doorstep.
“I am in deep trouble because I have no money,” the person said, shedding tears.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Taiga handed over all the precious money he had on hand.
He did not look back or regret it for a single second.
Why was Taiga able to take such an unbelievable action?
It was because he lived his life solely to give everything he possessed to the person right in front of him.
This episode is deeply connected to your current life.
Have you ever felt like you lost something or were taken advantage of when you were kind to others?
Is there a night when you feel sad, thinking, “Why am I the only one who always has to endure this?”
Taiga’s way of life provides you with a completely new perspective.
Giving is not the same as being deprived.
Rather, it is a guaranteed action that makes your own heart supremely rich.
A first-class way of living always begins with bringing joy to the person in front of you.
Through Taiga’s story, an eye-opening change will surely visit your daily life.
“If you want to be happy, it is not enough to just wish for ‘happiness.’ You must make someone else happy.”
—— Albert Schweitzer
Why Does Connecting with Art Dramatically Improve the Quality of Your Life?
Do you happen to think that art has nothing to do with your everyday life?
That is a massive misunderstanding.
Connecting with works of art is the most powerful means to fundamentally elevate your life.
Picture this for a moment.
The exact second you return home, completely exhausted from work, with your heart feeling bone-dry.
What if a beautiful painting were right there?
Just by standing in front of that painting, don’t you feel your heart suddenly becoming lighter?
Art transcends the walls of unspoken words and appeals directly to your psychology.
The paintings of Ike Taiga possess a mysterious rhythm that instantly relaxes whoever looks at them.
The lines he drew are carefree and entirely free of any malice or hidden motives.
Why is that? Because he himself held the brush while thinking of nothing else but making you happy.
To appreciate art means that you get to monopolize the “healing energy” created by past geniuses who poured their very lives into their work.
Could there be any other hobby that is so luxurious and packed with benefits specifically for you?
Art is precisely what is necessary for you, especially when you are seeking immediate relaxation as quickly as possible.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
—— Francis Bacon
How Does Ike Taiga’s Passion for “Art Collecting” Rescue Your Lonely Heart?
Ike Taiga absolutely loved collecting old Chinese paintings and beautiful books.
Whenever he received money, he would immediately spend it to buy those items for his collection.
However, he never hid them away in his room to enjoy them all by himself.
If someone said, “I would love to see it,” he would joyfully show it to absolutely anyone.
Sometimes, he would even go so far as to give it away as a present on the spot.
Why didn’t Taiga treat his collected treasures with more protective secrecy?
No, it wasn’t because he didn’t care about them.
It was because he knew that “sharing beautiful things with others” was the ultimate joy.
Don’t you also feel the urge to tell someone about a movie or a piece of music that you love?
At that exact moment, hasn’t the loneliness inside your heart vanished completely?
Collecting art and loving it creates a warm connection with society.
When you come to love art, you are no longer alone.
The world of beauty that Taiga loved will fill your lonely everyday life with a wonderful warmth.
“We can only become rich by giving away to others.”
—— Saint Francis
How Does Mimi Takamizawa’s Theme “Your Eyes, My Eyes” Connect with Ike Taiga’s Gaze?
Here, please allow me to speak about myself.
I, Mimi Takamizawa, continue to paint “eyes” throughout my works.
It is the theme of “Your Eyes, My Eyes.”
Why do I obsess over eyes? Don’t you find it curious?
It is because the eyes are the place that speaks the most eloquently about the human heart.
And Ike Taiga, who lived in the Edo period, also painted figures with very distinct “eyes.”
The eyes of the people Taiga drew are somehow humorous and possess an incredibly gentle look.
Those eyes gaze steadily at you as you stand in front of the painting.
It is as if they are whispering, “I know your suffering.”
My creative theme is exactly the same.
I paint eyes within my artwork, and through those eyes, I continuously feel you, who are standing right in front of the piece.
I want to know your anxiety, your loneliness, and every single one of your emotions.
Taiga’s gentle gaze and the gaze that I paint transcend time to envelop you.
When you look at this painting, you too are having a conversation through sight with Taiga and me.
Why don’t we put an end to you suffering all by yourself?
The gaze of art will absolutely never betray you.
“And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
—— Friedrich Nietzsche
Why Does the “Desperate Service” of Artists Become the Greatest Devotion to You?
What do you think the job of an artist truly is?
Is it something lofty, noble, and pretentious?
No, it is completely different.
The job of an artist is to provide a thorough, desperate service at their own expense.
It is a devotion entirely meant for you.
When requested during his travels, Ike Taiga would paint for anyone, no matter how exhausted he was.
It was never for the sake of money, but solely to bring a smile to the person right in front of him.
He truly became a thorough clown to entertain the people.
I share the exact same sentiment.
An artist dedicates the entirety of their life to you, who are right in front of them.
Please, go ahead and laugh at me.
One becomes stronger by being laughed at.
Delivering this desperate service is my ultimate duty.
The work of an artist is, in essence, a thorough buffoonery.
I am a man of patience, a man of resilience, and I will never give up.
The reason I decided to become a painter was because I learned the story of Vincent van Gogh.
The name “Mimi” in Mimi Takamizawa—which means “ear” in Japanese—was chosen by myself to honor that famous ear-slitting incident of Gogh.
I absolutely love this famous quote left behind by Gogh:
“I want to express something comforting in pictures, as music is comforting.”
I think it is a truly magnificent statement.
If a work or a job expresses something but fails to move anyone’s heart or offer any comfort, it holds absolutely no value.
“In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
—— The Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 12 (New Testament)
Why Can the Three Massive Worries of Your Life All Be Completely Resolved by Art?
Now, let us reflect on three major questions or worries you might face in your life.
You surely must recognize some of these within yourself.
First, the existential anxiety of wondering, “Do I even have any value?”
Second, the fear of isolation, thinking, “No one truly understands me.”
Third, the worry about daily life, asking, “What will happen to my livelihood in the future?”
How do these make you feel?
They are painful and urgent issues that require immediate attention, aren’t they?
But please, rest assured.
These problems are, in reality, completely capable of being resolved through art.
Why can I state this so confidently?
Because art is a place that validates your existence exactly as you are, entirely and completely.
Please look at Ike Taiga’s paintings.
Depicted there are people simply relaxing and gazing at a river, or taking a peaceful nap.
Through his pictures, Taiga whispers, “Even if you do nothing, just being alive is wonderful.”
When you immerse yourself in art, you are liberated from the evaluations of society.
Art proves to you that you possess a first-class value just by being yourself.
Look at that—doesn’t your heart start moving slightly toward a feeling of relief?
“Humans cannot control human destiny. However, how humans choose to direct their own minds is something humans can decide for themselves.”
—— Osamu Dazai (From The Setting Sun)
What Is the Astonishing Mechanism, Never Taught by Anyone Else, by Which Art Erases Your Anxiety?
Why can art go so far as to resolve the concrete worries of your daily livelihood?
It is because art completely rewrites the “filter of your brain.”
When you are carrying heavy worries, your field of vision becomes extremely narrow.
Dark news and bleak futures are the only things that jump out at you, aren’t they?
However, when you gaze upon the dynamic paintings of Ike Taiga, an astonishing change occurs in your brain.
An image instantly floats into your mind: “The world is so incredibly vast and free.”
When the brain is refreshed, a curious thing happens—excellent ideas begin to spring forth one after another.
The methods for things to work out well naturally come into view.
By adjusting and organizing your mind, art becomes a powerful tool to better your actual daily life.
Please present your brain with a distinctively special experience that stands completely apart from the rest.
“All art is but a means of expressing the human soul.”
—— George Sand
How Will a Tenacity Like Toyoda Sakichi’s “Inventing Madness” Transform Your Business and Daily Life?
Here, let us introduce an unexpected twist to our narrative.
We shall shift our conversation from the stories of painters to the very origin of Japanese manufacturing.
Do you know Toyoda Sakichi, the founder of the Toyota Group?
He was truly a man of absolute tenacity and patience.
He was called an “eccentric” by those around him and treated as a “madman.”
Why? Because from morning until night, day after day, he would continuously make something only to break it, build it, and then rebuild it all over again.
He was a man of few words and was always treated as an oddball.
However, what lived inside his heart was nothing but a pure passion: “I want to invent things to make everyone’s life easier.”
The cold glares of the people around him meant absolutely nothing to him.
How does this lifestyle of Sakichi’s “inventing madness” relate to your everyday life?
When you try to start something new, don’t you worry about how others see you?
Don’t you get anxious, thinking, “What if I fail?”
Look at Sakichi.
Neither success nor failure was ever the end for him.
What matters is the courage to continue.
Regardless of everything else, you do it the longest and work the hardest.
That exact attitude built a corporation that changed the world.
If you apply that same tenacity to the challenges right in front of you, it will inevitably lead to eye-opening results.
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
—— Thomas Edison
To You, Who Fear Failure: Why Does the Quote by Toyoda Kiichiro Powerfully Push Your Back Right Now?
Sakichi’s son, Toyoda Kiichiro, was also a tremendously unyielding man of resilience.
He was the figure who built the Japanese automobile industry from absolute zero.
He left behind these profound words:
“We do it precisely because it is difficult. I do it because nobody else does it, and nobody else can do it. A man like me might be a fool, but if such fools do not exist, nothing new will ever be born into this world.”
How does that sound?
Does hearing these words not make a fire burn deep within your chest?
Why did he go so far as to call himself a “fool” and keep pushing forward with his challenges?
It was because he knew that true value lies precisely in doing what nobody else will do.
The exact same thing can be said for your daily life.
Aren’t there tasks at work or chores at home where you think, “This is so tedious, nobody else would bother doing it”?
Try doing exactly that with a smile and at the absolute highest quality.
At that very instant, you become an irreplaceable, first-class presence to everyone around you.
Kiichiro’s spirit provides your everyday life with a fresh spice for new challenges.
There is absolutely no reason for you to fear failure.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
—— Thomas Edison
What Truth of Human Relationships Should You Learn from the Miraculous Partnership of Honda Soichiro and Fujisawa Takeo?
Furthermore, I shall share with you the stories of other great Japanese leaders.
Honda Soichiro, the founder of Honda, and Fujisawa Takeo, the man who supported him.
Along with Kamiya Shotaro, who was called the god of sales for Toyota, and Ishida Taizo, who anchored their management.
Their episodes will blow away your worries regarding human relationships in an instant.
Honda Soichiro was a genius of technology, but he understood absolutely nothing about business management.
On the flip side, Fujisawa Takeo knew nothing about technology, but he was a genius of management.
The two of them completely trusted each other’s areas of expertise and absolutely never interfered in the other person’s domain.
Why were they able to build such a flawless relationship of trust?
Because each of them placed the highest priority on “making the other person win.”
Kamiya Shotaro also possessed a thorough spirit of devotion, claiming, “Customers first, dealers second, and the manufacturer third.”
Ishida Taizo preached a powerful sense of independence, saying, “Defend your own castle by yourself.”
These famous quotes offer incredibly beneficial lessons for your daily human relationships.
If you are currently suffering and thinking, “That person doesn’t understand my feelings,” why don’t you try becoming that person’s “Fujisawa Takeo” first?
Acknowledge the other person’s strengths, trust them, and leave it to them.
The moment you do, the human relationships around you will begin to rotate with surprising smoothness.
“My success is due to the fact that I kept trying when others gave up.”
—— Thomas Edison
How Will Steve Jobs’ Famous Quote Transform the Quality of Your Everyday Work?
The words of a modern genius, Steve Jobs, also offer you wonderful hints.
Jobs said this:
“Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.”
He also spoke of this ultimate truth of marketing:
No amount of marketing can turn a bad product into a hit.
How does this connect to your work or the way you live your life?
Daily chores, daily paperwork, repetitive routine tasks.
Are you compromising and thinking, “Well, this is good enough”?
The “quality” Jobs speaks of does not merely refer to manufacturing luxury goods.
It is about how much of your soul you poured into the task right in front of you.
Just like Ike Taiga poured his entire sincerity into a single painting.
The work you finish with all your heart will inevitably remain in someone’s memory eternally.
Refusing to cut corners and offering the finest thing possible—that is what ultimately circles back to you as your own high evaluation and your own peace of mind.
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
—— Steve Jobs
Why Is Neglecting the Effort to Communicate Good Things the Greatest Loss for You?
Here, let us look at your life through the lens of marketing.
Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, left behind a highly crucial statement:
“When a product is created after tremendous hardship, quietly researched in some corner of the world, a product that has never been manufactured before and that no one has ever seen—if you intend to turn that product into a commodity, you must arouse a desire among the people to possess it. No matter how excellent the ‘product’ may be, it can never become a ‘commodity’ unless that desire is awakened.”
It is a long quote, but in short, it means “If it isn’t communicated, it is exactly the same as if it didn’t exist.”
Why does this story have anything to do with your daily life?
Are you communicating your hard work or your kindness effectively to those around you?
Are you feeling lonely, thinking, “I am trying so hard, yet nobody notices”?
Good things and good intentions do not reach the other person simply by you holding onto them.
Efforts to communicate them and creative ways to express them are absolutely necessary.
Ike Taiga did not simply paint inside the mountains all by himself.
He mingled with many people and actively handed his works over to them.
Please try to find creative ways to clearly communicate your wonderful intentions to others through words and actions.
When that announcement finally reaches them, your life will begin to work out beautifully.
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
—— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Learning from the Tenacity of Choya Umeshu: What Is the Real Reason You Should Live Devoted to “This One Path”?
Are you familiar with the history of Choya Umeshu?
It used to be said of them:
“If you cannot succeed with plum liqueur (umeshu), give up on life.”
With that exact level of resolve, they staked the entire fate of their company on a single product: umeshu.
Without ever looking sideways, they focused solely on making the finest umeshu possible.
As a result, they have now become a first-class brand known by absolutely everyone.
This tenacity shares a common thread with the traditional Japanese way of living.
Allow me to display the words of the master of haiku, Matsuo Basho, right here:
“In the end, possessing neither talent nor art, I simply bind myself to this one single path.”
Basho stated that he possessed no other talents whatsoever; he had lived his life solely by clinging to this one single path of haiku.
Why did these immensely great figures risk their lives for just one thing?
Because rather than scattering your energy by looking here and there, focusing entirely on one single thing allows you to exert a far more powerful strength.
Are you currently wavering among many different options?
Are you exhausted from trying to grasp everything at once—work, hobbies, human relationships?
Like Taiga, like Basho, and like Choya Umeshu, please find that one single ray of light in your life where you can say, “I will not lose in this.”
Your heart will instantly become lighter, and the path you must walk will come clearly into view.
“To learn when young is to achieve when mature. To learn when mature is to avoid decline when old. To learn when old is to prevent one’s name from rotting after death.”
—— Sato Issai
What Is the Secret of “True Success” That Will Gently and Deeply Warm Your Heart at the Very End?
We have journeyed through many stories and examples up to this point.
What kind of images are floating in your mind right now?
Is it the gentle smile of Ike Taiga?
The gritty, unyielding tenacity of Toyoda Sakichi?
Or perhaps the fiery passion of Honda Soichiro?
Every single one of these narratives exists entirely for you, the protagonist.
Here, I present you with the words of Henry Ford:
“Most people think of success as a obtaining. But the truth is, success is a giving.”
Why is giving, rather than obtaining, the true meaning of success?
When we obtain something, we feel a flash of joy.
However, that joy fades away very quickly.
On the other hand, the memory of giving something to someone and seeing them rejoice remains in our hearts eternally.
Because Ike Taiga gave everything away completely, he became a master painter whose name remains carved in history, and above all, he lived a profoundly happy life himself.
By simply shifting your awareness toward “giving” starting from today, your life will transform into something incredibly wonderful.
Do you know within yourself that you are living while carrying a small amount of loneliness?
It was to comfort that very heart of yours that the works of Mimi Takamizawa were created.
It is art meant entirely to heal your heart.
Please keep these words tucked away safely and dearly inside the pocket of your heart.
“All’s well that ends well.”
—— William Shakespeare
Postscript: A Modest Gift for You from the Painter Mimi Takamizawa
Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for reading this long text to the very end.
From here, as a postscript, please allow me to speak just a little bit about myself, Mimi Takamizawa.
I do not use traditional canvases and brushes.
I create my artwork digitally.
Then, using the giclée printmaking technique, I print the artwork onto the highest grade of printmaking paper to complete the piece.
Why digital?
Because I want to paint a light that reaches you, who live in the modern era, with the utmost clarity and depth.
The themes of my creations begin with familiar topics.
Your eyes, my eyes, Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, the gaze, history, solitude, isolation, hardship, resurrection, and liberation.
These constitute my themes.
They might sound heavy, but when I talk, I absolutely love cheerful and fun conversations.
I believe that a painter is a “doctor who saves the soul.”
The work of an artist is a thorough service provided entirely at their own expense.
It is a devotion to you.
An artist surrenders everything to you, who are right in front of them.
Therefore, please do not abandon me.
Please laugh at my awkward way of living.
One becomes stronger by being laughed at.
Delivering a desperate service is my ultimate calling.
The work of an artist is, in essence, a thorough buffoonery.
I am a man of patience, a man of resilience, and I will never give up.
The reason I resolved to become a painter was because I learned the story of Vincent van Gogh.
The name “Mimi” (meaning “ear”) in Mimi Takamizawa was a name I gave myself to honor Gogh’s famous ear-slitting incident.
I am incredibly fond of this quote left behind by Gogh:
“I want to express something comforting in pictures, as music is comforting.”
I believe it is a truly magnificent statement.
If a work or a job expresses something but fails to move anyone’s heart or offer any comfort, it holds absolutely no value.
Not all past masterpieces were painted solely through innate, natural-born talent.
They were brought into existence through decades of blood-soaked trial and error.
By continuously painting “eyes” within my work, I am continuously feeling you, who are right there on the other side of the screen, right in front of the piece.
I want to know you, who are right in front of me, so much more.
I deeply respect Mr. Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya.
Just like him, I refuse to look sideways and pour 100% of my energy into my work.
Mr. Munetsugu once said:
“This is no time to be indulging in hobbies.”
It was classical music that saved Mr. Munetsugu during his unfortunate and troubled youth.
Yet, despite loving classical music so much that he built and managed his own music hall after retiring from the leadership of CoCo Ichibanya, he did not listen to it at all during his years as an active executive.
He possessed the fierce determination that it was no time to be listening to music, and that he must dedicate the entirety of his time to his customers.
During the initial days of running the coffee shop that became the predecessor to CoCo Ichibanya, customers hardly came at all.
Because of that, it is said that Mr. Munetsugu and his wife survived their lunches by eating the leftover “crusts of white bread” that were not used for sandwiches.
Since they started from absolute zero, he says such hardships were only natural.
Starting from a place where they had nothing makes those days a wonderful memory now, he recalls with a smile.
Believing that things would inevitably get better if he strictly maintained a customer-first philosophy, he worked every single day, concentrating on his tasks like stacking bricks one by one.
Immediate decision, immediate conclusion, immediate execution.
If you try anything, results will show, so the first step is to just do it.
In return, you give it your absolute all with everything you have.
To dedicate one’s life to work—I, too, wish to dedicate the entirety of my life to you, who are right in front of me.
I would like to share these piercing words by Mr. Tokuji Munetsugu:
“During my active years, I maintained no hobbies and made no friends. I have never once stepped into a bar. I did absolutely nothing that would interfere with my work. There were years where I worked 5,640 hours. I believed that if I did not lead by example, my subordinates would not work for me.”
“Never look sideways; dedicate your entire being to management.”
“It was an incredibly lonely life. That is why I wanted others to show even a little bit of interest in me. I wanted them to be interested. That became my starting point. Therefore, when I started the business, rather than making money, I simply wanted to bring joy to people. I wanted to be told, even just a little, that it was a good thing I existed.”
Life is not determined by the circumstances of one’s birth and upbringing.
Mr. Munetsugu does not know the faces of his biological parents.
He was placed in an orphanage immediately after birth, and even after being taken in by foster parents, he spent an impoverished childhood due to his foster father’s gambling addiction.
During his youth, because there was nothing to eat, he would survive starvation during the summers by eating wild weeds.
It was truly a life of dramatic ups and downs.
Even if it looked like he was living by running straight into situations head-on, in return, he threw his entire existence into management, practicing thorough hands-on realism.
Working 12 hours or more a day was the bare minimum condition.
He didn’t want to rest, he didn’t want to play; he made work his hobby and offered his entire body to his labor.
This is the ultimate form of the “You-First Philosophy.”
I, too, am applauding loudly inside my heart whenever you are right in front of me.
I welcome you with a standing ovation.
Things of true value, more often than not, do not yield immediate results.
Things do not go perfectly right from the very beginning.
Rather than overthinking, just try doing it first.
Therefore, please do not give up easily either.
What kind of life you end up with is entirely determined by a person’s diligence, patience, and power of continuation.
Do you know within yourself that you are living while carrying a small amount of loneliness?
It was to comfort that very heart of yours that the works of Mimi Takamizawa were created.
It is art meant entirely to heal your heart.
With my deepest gratitude for the miracle of being able to encounter you like this.
From Mimi Takamizawa
Finally, to You, the Words of My Beloved Henry Ford and the Great Sages
“An opportunity always presents itself at first as a crisis, or appears in the form of a heavy burden.”
—— Aizo Soma
“Besides the child, Theo left me another mission──to let Vincent’s work be seen by as many people as possible, so that its true value may be recognized.”
—— Jo (Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law, wife of Theo)
“Life does not exist within comfortable living; true life is found in the midst of death.”
—— An ancient Japanese proverb (A profound truth for deep living)
“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know. Blunt the sharpness, untangle the knots, soften the glare, settle with the dust. This is called the primal union.”
—— Laozi
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything.”
—— The Letter of Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 4, Verses 4–6 (New Testament)
“God moves us. We are nothing but tools within the hands of God. Therefore, we must simply fulfill our duties with utter sincerity in the place where we have been planted.”
—— John Calvin
“The highest thing that you can give to the world is yourself. No more, no less. Simply offer your entire existence for the sake of the person right in front of you.”
—— Henry Ford