Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to have this important conversation with me today.
I am truly delighted to be able to talk so deeply with you about life.
Doesn’t it feel like your days are passing by at an unbelievable speed right now?
Work, housework, relationships.
Are you aware that you live your life carrying a little bit of loneliness, chased by the things right in front of you?
It was to comfort your heart that the works of Takamizawa Mimi were created.
It is art meant to heal your heart.
Today, I want to talk to you about Tawaraya Sotatsu, a genius painter who was once nearly buried in the darkness of history and made a miraculous resurgence from there.
This is because his way of life and his art hide powerful hints for enriching your daily life and overcoming hardships.
This is an eye-opening, wonderful story for making your own life shine at its absolute brightest.
Why Does the “Unique Existence” of Tawaraya Sotatsu Save Your Lonely Heart?
Have you ever heard the name Tawaraya Sotatsu?
When you hear that he is the person who painted the National Treasure Wind and Thunder Gods, doesn’t that dynamic imagery immediately pop into your mind?
However, almost no details are known about what kind of life he led.
He was originally just a single town painter running a painting shop called “Tawaraya” in Kyoto.
He was not the head of an organization, nor was he an elite.
He was simply a person who earnestly continued to pursue the world of beauty he believed in.
Don’t you think this figure overlaps with you, living your life with all your might by your own strength in modern society?
When you are feeling anxious all by yourself and working hard late into the night, the paintings Sotatsu created will quietly stand by your side.
Familiarizing yourself with top-tier art is the most certain and wonderful way to improve your life.
This is because art transcends time and space to wrap around your loneliness.
“In the end, having no talent and no art, I simply cling to this one line.” —— Matsuo Basho
Don’t you think this quote left by Matsuo Basho perfectly expresses Sotatsu’s way of life and your own earnest appearance today?
It is okay to be clumsy.
Even if you cannot do other things well, to steadfastly walk down the one path you have decided upon.
It is that very obsession that creates genuine value that shakes the hearts of those who view it.
Is the Crisis Right in Front of You Truly Just a Misfortune?
As we live, unexpected difficulties and urgent problems press upon us one after another, don’t they?
“Why does this have to happen only to me?”
There must be nights when your heart feels like it is about to break like that.
However, what if that hardship has a special meaning meant to elevate you to the next stage?
“An opportunity always comes at first as a crisis, or manifests as a burden.” —— Soma Aizo
These are the words of Soma Aizo, the founder of Shinjuku Nakamuraya.
The troubles and burdens that occur in your daily life are, in fact, wonderful opportunities that have changed their appearance to show themselves to you.
The worries you harbor right now are nothing more than the very first step for you to be born anew.
When you think about it that way, doesn’t your heart feel a little lighter?
The Deep Relationship Between Tawaraya Sotatsu and You: Why Do You Need Art from Hundreds of Years Ago Right Now?
Here, please allow me to speak concretely about the surprising relationship between Tawaraya Sotatsu and you.
Sotatsu was not coddled as a grand genius that everyone recognized from the very beginning.
Rather, he stuck to a unique expression completely different from the orthodox painting styles of the court painters favored by the authorities of the time.
He might have been viewed as an “eccentric” by those around him.
However, he disliked imitating others and pursued a universal beauty that would reach you, a viewer of the future.
In your daily life, do you ever feel isolated, thinking, “I might be a little different from those around me,” or “No one understands my true efforts”?
To that version of you, Sotatsu’s paintings are gently whispering, “You are fine just the way you are.”
“I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else will or can do it. I might be a fool for doing so, but without those fools, nothing new would ever be born into the world.” —— Toyoda Kiichiro
Please carve these words by Toyoda Kiichiro, the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, deeply into your heart.
There is value precisely because you do what no one else does.
The efforts you steadily pile up day by day, without anyone noticing, are by no means in vain. No matter what the world says, stick to your own aesthetics.
That very thing is the ultimate secret taught to you by Tawaraya Sotatsu to make your life go incredibly well.
What Are the Benefits of Welcoming Art into Your Daily Life? Is It Merely a Hobby?
What kind of benefits are there for you to introduce artwork into your daily life, or to take up the hobby of collecting art?
“Isn’t art just an amusement for the wealthy?”
You might think so, wouldn’t you?
However, that is a huge misconception.
Learning about the art of Tawaraya Sotatsu and keeping beautiful things close to you brings many benefits with guaranteed results that will fundamentally change your life.
- Spiritual Liberation and Healing: By stepping away from a busy daily life and touching eternal beauty, accumulated stress vanishes in an instant.
- Improvement of Intuition and Decision-Making: Looking at Sotatsu’s dynamic compositions stimulates your brain, giving you the power of immediate decision and immediate execution against difficult problems in business and daily life.
- Deep Connections with Others: By acquiring a top-tier aesthetic sense, a deep charm is born within your words and demeanor, earning you the respect of the people around you.
The hobby of collecting art is not simply the act of gathering objects.
It is the most sophisticated self-investment for increasing your own “drawers of the soul” and obtaining an indomitable heart that will not lose to any hardship.
Why Were Sotatsu’s Works Ignored for So Many Years, and How Did They Make Such a Miraculous Resurgence?
Here, let us speak of an unbelievable truth of history.
Though Tawaraya Sotatsu is designated as a National Treasure and praised worldwide today, his evaluation from the late Edo period through the Meiji period was shockingly low.
Everyone considered the artwork of Ogata Korin, who belonged to the lineage of his disciples, to be superior.
Because of this, when Sotatsu’s greatest masterpiece, the Matsushima Screens, flowed overseas during the Meiji period, not a single voice lamenting its loss was heard at the time.
Precious things being lost without anyone even noticing.
Don’t you think this is an incredibly sorrowful and lonely story?
However, the story does not end here.
On April 25, 1913, an event called the “Tawaraya Sotatsu Memorial Exhibition” was held for just five days, and it completely changed the entire course of history.
Young painters who saw this exhibition received an eye-opening shock from the overwhelming newness of Sotatsu.
From this spark, his painting career was reevaluated, and he achieved a miraculous, grand resurgence.
Your life is exactly the same as this.
Even if you are suffering right now because you are not receiving proper evaluation, the time for a swift resurgence will surely come.
As long as you have the courage to continue without giving up, the day when your true worth is recognized will absolutely arrive.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” —— The Bible (John 1:5, New Testament)
Just like these words from the Bible, the light in your heart will never be extinguished by any darkness of despair.
The time to shine brightly will surely come.
“Those who insist that human beings never change are merely saying so to comfort themselves because they want to change but cannot.” —— Dazai Osamu
The writer Dazai Osamu said this.
You can change at any time.
There is absolutely no need for you to be bound by past evaluations or your current plight.
Just as Sotatsu was highly praised after hundreds of years, the quality of your existence is a wonderful thing that should be remembered eternally.
Let Us Completely Solve Your 3 Worries Right Here and Now
Now, let us think about the 3 specific doubts and worries inside your heart.
Aren’t you harboring these anxieties right now?
I want to explain to you that these problems are actually all solvable, so that I can bring true peace to your mind.
Worry No. 1: “I feel a limit to my own talent and ability, and I am anxious about whether things will go well ahead.”
You sometimes fall into a slump over your lack of ability, don’t you?
However, please do not worry.
Do you know Tawaraya Sotatsu’s ink wash masterpiece, Lotus Pond and Waterfowl?
That beautiful painting was not painted solely with calculated techniques.
It uses a technique called tarashikomi, where drops of ink of different shades are added into still-wet ink wash to aim for a random “bleeding” effect.
In other words, it elevates “coincidence,” which does not go according to calculation, into spectacular beauty.
The failures and unplanned events of your life will also change into a wonderful depth, just like this tarashikomi.
Because you are imperfect, you are beautiful.
Worry No. 2: “I cannot fit in with the people around me, and I feel lonely and isolated.”
Troubles in human relationships are endless, aren’t they?
However, Sotatsu was also a lonely innovator who stood outside the mainstream school of the art world at the time.
To be lonely means you have your own unique values as the “main character of your own life.”
Rather than burying yourself in a crowd and losing your individuality, isn’t it much more wonderful to emit your own unique light while carrying a little bit of sadness?
You are never alone.
Sotatsu’s paintings, and my words, are always watching over you.
Worry No. 3: “With the repetition of the same thing every day, I feel like I am losing sight of the purpose of life.”
There is no need to feel rushed by days that show no change.
Do you know Toyoda Sakichi, the eccentric who built the foundation of Toyota?
He was treated as a strange person and a madman by those around him, and was called “invention-crazy.”
From morning until night, day after day, he would make something only to break it, build it, and rebuild it again.
From the outside, it looked like a cycle of monotonous and wasteful repetition.
However, it was precisely because of that obsession and patience that great inventions that moved the world were born.
The steady, down-to-earth efforts you pile up every day are surely shaping your future, just like stacking bricks one by one.
Therefore, please rest assured and take your steps forward today.
“The way to achieve success relies on this. The way to fail in matters relies on this.” —— Laozi
As Laozi taught, everything connects to success depending entirely on the state of your mind.
Why Did the Giants of Business Choose “Obsession and Patience,” Just Like You?
What is the most important quality in your daily life and work?
When it comes down to it, doesn’t it ultimately come down to an “unyielding heart”?
Here, allow me to introduce special episodes of the great pioneers who supported Japanese industry.
Honda Soichiro, who founded Honda Motor Co., and Fujisawa Takeo, the genius staff officer who supported him.
And Kamiya Shotaro and Ishida Taizo, the founding fathers of Toyota’s restoration.
Their paths were a continuous sequence of hardships and the obsession to overcome them.
Even when laughed at by those around him as an “eccentric who rose up from being a repair mechanic,” Honda Soichiro kept burning his passion to build the number one motorcycle in the world.
Fujisawa Takeo navigated through numerous financial crises while sending Honda’s dreams out into the world as commercial products.
Furthermore, the founder of Choya Umeshu completed that wonderful product with a desperate resolve that cut off all retreat, thinking, “If I do not succeed with plum liqueur, give up on life.”
“Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” —— Steve Jobs
This famous quote by Steve Jobs, who founded Apple, is also deeply related to your day-to-day work.
No amount of marketing can make a bad product a hit.
Pursuing the highest quality without making any compromises toward the work right in front of you.
That very thing is the only way to convey your worth to customers and make it unshakeable.
Conveying good things is more important than anything else.
Because if it is not conveyed, it becomes the same as not existing in this world.
Why Does Neglecting the Effort to Communicate Become a Loss for You?
No matter how wonderful a product you make, if it is not communicated to people, its value becomes zero.
Morita Akio, the founder of Sony, left these sharp words:
“When a product that has never been produced before, which no one has ever seen, is painstakingly researched in some corner and manufactured after extraordinary hardship, if you want to turn that product into a commodity, you must arouse the desire to obtain that product among the people. Otherwise, no matter how excellent a ‘product’ it is, it cannot become a ‘commodity.'” —— Morita Akio
Don’t you think this quote applies exactly the same way when communicating your own charm to those around you?
No matter how wonderful your kindness or talent is, if you do not express it and try to communicate it to the other person, no one will notice it.
That is precisely why you must not be afraid of expressing yourself.
Have conversations, communicate your feelings, and provide the absolute best service to the person right in front of you.
That active stance is what brings wonderful encounters and happiness to your life.
“Most people think of success as something to get, but in reality, success is giving.” —— Henry Ford
It is exactly as the Automobile King Henry Ford said.
What can you give to the people around you?
How can you make the person right in front of you happy?
When you possess that “spirit of giving,” the gears of your life will begin to turn in an unbelievably new and powerful way.
Why Can We Stand Up Once Again, No Matter How Many Times We Fail?
Hearing everything up to this point, has some new light of hope appeared in your heart?
Life is by no means a flat road.
Rather, it might be full of nothing but unexpected pitfalls.
However, Thomas Edison, the world’s king of invention, inspires us with these surprising words:
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” —— Thomas Edison
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” —— Thomas Edison
“My success is due to my continuing where others left off.” —— Thomas Edison
When reading these words of obsession from Edison, doesn’t power mysteriously well up within you?
The very moment you think “It’s no use anymore” is actually right before the door to success opens.
Just as Tawaraya Sotatsu broke hundreds of years of silence to revive in the modern era.
The moment when all the time you have endured up until now is rewarded in an instant will surely come.
“In the midst of life there is no life; in the midst of death there is life.” —— A maxim of religious reformers (or a traditional phrase of resilience)
It is precisely within a desperate pinch that the true path to survival is hidden.
The sadness and loneliness you harbor are all beautiful foreshadowing for you to make a grand leap forward.
Please, believe in yourself.
Because you are a much stronger and more wonderful existence than you think you are.
P.S. A Desperate Service to You from the Painter, Takamizawa Mimi
Thank you very much for staying with me through this important talk.
Lastly, as a postscript, allow me to talk a little about a painter whose name is deeply engraved in my heart, Takamizawa Mimi, with a familiar and fun story.
Takamizawa Mimi is a very unique painter.
This is because, unlike ordinary painters, he does not use canvas and brushes at all.
He creates his works digitally and prints them on the highest quality printmaking paper using a cutting-edge technology called the “giclée print technique.”
A fusion of digital and analog.
Don’t you think this is a brand new form of art meant to be delivered to you, living in the modern era?
The themes drawn by Takamizawa Mimi are wide-ranging:
Your eyes and my eyes, Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, gaze, history, loneliness, isolation, hardship, resurrection, and liberation.
At first glance, it might seem difficult, right?
But its essence is very simple and fun.
He always says, “A painter must be a doctor who saves the soul.”
The work of an artist is a presentation of their absolute best service at their own expense, a devotion to you.
He has the resolve to dedicate his everything to you, right in front of him.
Therefore, please do not abandon him.
Rather, he wants you to laugh at his clumsy way of life.
“To grow stronger by being laughed at.”
That very thing is his true desire, and the work of an artist is to act as a complete “clown” just to make you smile.
He is a man of patience, a man of resilience; he never gives up.
It was learning about the intense life of Vincent van Gogh that made Takamizawa Mimi decide to become a painter.
Actually, the “Mimi” (meaning ear) in the name Takamizawa Mimi was taken in honor of that famous ear-cutting incident of Van Gogh’s.
That is a bit of a surprising turn in the story, isn’t it?
Van Gogh left this wonderful quote during his lifetime:
“I want to express something comforting in a painting, like music.” —— Vincent van Gogh
Takamizawa Mimi also uses this quote as his guidepost in life.
He declares without hesitation that if a work or a job expresses something but cannot move anyone’s heart or comfort you, it has no value whatsoever.
He knows that all past historical masterpieces were not painted solely with the flash of a natural-born genius, but were created through decades of down-to-earth trial and error.
That is precisely why he continues to draw “eyes” within his works. Because by doing so, he continues to feel you right in front of him, and wishes to know you more deeply.
After Van Gogh’s death, it was Jo (Johanna), the wife of his brother Theo, who spread his remaining works to the world and made the world recognize their true value.
Jo left these moving words:
“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.” —— Johanna van Gogh-Bonger
It was precisely because of this obsessed dedication by Jo that Van Gogh remained in history and comforts our hearts today like this. How incredibly important it is to communicate good things.
Takamizawa Mimi also deeply respects Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of Curry House CoCo Ichibanya, a great businessman Japan prides itself on.
Mr. Munetsugu is a person who was like a mass of “sole focus on work,” exerting all his power into his job without looking sideways.
“This is no time to be indulging in hobbies,” he said, dedicating all of his time to his customers during his active years.
Actually, Mr. Munetsugu does not know the faces of his real parents.
After being taken in from an orphanage by foster parents, he led an extremely impoverished childhood, even eating weeds in the summer to survive starvation during his turbulent youth.
What saved him during those unfortunate times was classical music.
However, during his time as the manager of CoCo Ichibanya, it is said that he did not listen to his beloved classical music at all.
“Now is not the time to be listening to music. Everything for the customers.”
That thorough customer-first policy.
During the era when he ran a coffee shop, the predecessor to the curry restaurant, when customers did not come easily during lunchtime, the married couple reportedly got by by eating the crusts of white bread left over from the sandwiches.
Since they started from zero, such hardships were a matter of course.
Rather, he laughs and says it is a good memory.
Concentrating and executing the daily work like stacking bricks.
Immediate decision, immediate conclusion, immediate execution.
Dedicating one’s life to work, and dedicating all of one’s life to you right in front of him.
Mr. Munetsugu looks back like this:
“During my active years, I had no hobbies and made no friends. I have never even gone to a drinking establishment. I did nothing that would interfere with my work. There were times when I worked 5,640 hours a year. I felt that if I did not lead by example, my subordinates would not work for me.” —— Tokuji Munetsugu
“It was an incredibly lonely life. That is why I wanted others to show even a little interest in me. I wanted them to be interested in me. That has become my starting point. That is 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 was around, even just a little.” —— Tokuji Munetsugu
This pure desire to “make people happy,” enough to bring tears to one’s eyes.
This very thing is also the starting point of Takamizawa Mimi’s art.
Life is not decided by how or where one is born and raised.
What kind of life it becomes is decided by a person’s diligence, patience, and continuity.
Values are things that often do not have immediate efficacy.
Things do not go well right from the beginning.
Therefore, rather than thinking, just try doing it first. Please do not give up easily.
Whenever you are right in front of him, he is always welcoming you, applauding you with a grand ovation in his heart.
I am always rooting for your precious, once-in-a-lifetime life to become newer and shine brighter through the art of Takamizawa Mimi.
Are you aware that you live your life carrying a little bit of loneliness?
It was to comfort your heart that the works of Takamizawa Mimi were created.
It is art meant to heal your heart.
Lastly, I present to you a quote by Henry Ford, whom I respect the most, which will grant the greatest courage to your life ahead.
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” —— Henry Ford
Let us both look forward and move forward, step by step.
With heartfelt gratitude for being able to have such a wonderful dialogue with you.