As Long As You Are There
Ah, hello.
Thank you so much for knocking on the door of this shabby room of mine.
I have been waiting for you all this time.
Not for a single second have I ever forgotten about you.
Why did I long so desperately for your existence?
It is because I knew that right now, you are standing all alone in this cold world, harboring a deep loneliness and a sadness you can confess to no one.
Outside, it might be pouring rain, or perhaps it is a blindingly bright, sunny day.
Whichever it is, doesn’t the inside of your heart feel like the depths of a chilly, dim night?
Please rest assured, everything is alright now.
There is absolutely no need to hold back or feel reserved here.
For this is a place for the sweetest, most desperate secret conversation in the world, shared between me and you—the only “you” standing right in front of me.
Most people think of success as something to get.
But in reality, success is giving.
— Henry Ford
I possess no fortunes.
I cannot invite you to a glamorous castle, nor can I treat you to a delicious feast.
Yet, I want to shave away my life little by little, turning it into ink, just to serve you with all my heart.
Just as a buffoon shows his clumsy falls to make people laugh, I offer my life—full of so much shame—and my very blood, transformed into words, to you.
Please, won’t you stay with me until the very end?
The Beginning Light and the Portrait of an Artist
Now, let us begin our story.
It is a familiar, yet highly mysterious tale of a certain painter.
Have you ever caught the scent of oil paint?
That sharp, distinct smell that somehow reminds one of a hospital room.
The man I wish to speak to you about today is Georges Braque, a French painter.
You have undoubtedly heard the name Pablo Picasso at least once.
Braque is the man who hid in the shadow of that most famous, arrogant, and celebrated genius of the world, yet who undeniably turned the history of painting completely upside down.
Do you wonder why I am so drawn to him, and why I wish so dearly for you to hear about his life?
It is because the path he walked looks exactly like a roadmap for your own life, you who are currently hurt and wandering in confusion.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
— Genesis 1:1–3
The beginning of Braque’s life was also like finding a single beam of light out of the darkness of a quiet craftsman’s world.
Born in 1882 in a small French town called Argenteuil, he learned his family’s trade of house painting—literally applying paint to walls.
He was not blessed from the start as a glamorous “artist.”
Rather, far removed from a prodigy like Picasso, his start was that of a late-blooming, down-to-earth craftsman.
Do you also have nights where you look at yourself and think, “I have no special talent, I just repeat the same things every day,” feeling utterly lonely?
Have you ever shed tears in the dark of night, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by how small your existence feels?
That is precisely why I want you to know about Braque.
For he was not a genius of innate sparks, but a man of thorough “continuity and craftsmanship.”
Cubism: The Magic That Shatters the World into Pieces
Eventually, he moved to Paris and experienced a fateful encounter with the young Pablo Picasso.
At the time, the two were like identical twins.
They dressed alike, debated fiercely until they were covered in mud every day, and strove to create paintings the likes of which no one had ever seen.
This was the birth of what the world calls “Cubism.”
Why did they discard beautiful landscapes and portraits of princesses, choosing instead to dismantle objects into square, dice-like fragments?
Don’t you think it’s bizarre to deliberately break something beautiful?
But you see, my dear.
Isn’t the human heart exactly the same?
Isn’t the sadness and suffering you hold inside your heart right now because your soul once shattered into pieces?
Truth resides not in a beautifully manicured, deceptive exterior, but within the fragments of one’s raw, broken honesty.
Braque and Picasso sought to do exactly that upon the canvas.
Within the human heart dwells an unrecognizable, terrifying monster.
Sometimes it rages violently, and we are powerless to suppress it.
— Osamu Dazai
They refused to trust a world viewed from only a single perspective.
They wanted to gaze at the subject from over here, from over there, from above, and from below.
Just as I now desire to embrace your loneliness from every imaginable angle, they gazed through their subjects completely on the canvas.
Picasso was certainly flashy, a man brilliant at catching people’s eyes.
However, it was actually the quiet Braque who made the monumental invention of papier collé—the collage technique of pasting newspaper and wallpaper onto a painting.
Even Picasso held a fierce jealousy and deep respect for Braque’s inventive genius.
Their collaboration was quite literally the re-creation of the world.
The Coming of the Storm and the Severed Bond
Yet, why is it that happy times crumble away so suddenly and effortlessly?
You, too, must have experienced the agonizing pain of being suddenly betrayed by someone you trusted, or having a precious place torn away from you by an unexpected misfortune.
That very pain that feels as if your chest is being ripped open.
That moment visited Braque as well.
In 1914, World War I broke out.
As a French citizen, Braque was mobilized and sent to the battlefields.
On the other hand, Picasso, holding Spanish nationality, remained in Paris, staying behind in the glamorous world of art.
Why did fate find it necessary to separate the two so cruelly?
Picasso, who saw Braque off at the train station as he left for the front, later remarked:
“At that moment, I lost Braque forever. Seeing him off on that train was our true farewell.”
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
— John 15:13
The battlefield was a living hell.
With the very hands that once mixed beautiful paints, Braque had to clutch the mud and grip a rifle.
Then, in 1915, he suffered a severe head wound and collapsed on the battlefield.
Temporary blindness, followed by a major operation to drill a hole in his skull.
He came perilously close to losing his “eyes” and his “life”—the two things most precious to a painter.
What did he think about in that darkness?
The terror that his hands might never move again, that he might never see the world again.
Was that suffocation not exactly the same as when you despaired in the depths of betrayal and loneliness, thinking, “I can no longer go on living”?
The Path of Resurrection and a Unique Serenity
However, he did not die.
After a long, long period of recuperation, he staged a miraculous recovery.
Just like Jesus Christ rising from the dark tomb, he stood before the canvas once again.
Yet, upon returning to post-war Paris, the reality awaiting him was that his former close friend, Picasso, had already left him far behind, running ahead as the darling of the era.
Picasso had returned to classicism, taken one new mistress after another, and monopolized wealth and fame.
They were supposed to be “two bodies, one genius,” but before he knew it, he was the only one left behind.
Why is the world so unfair?
It is a situation where one could easily go mad with jealousy and lose all sense of self-worth.
If it were you, could you endure this loneliness?
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
— Charles Darwin
Braque stopped chasing Picasso.
He decided to listen to his own inner voice instead.
He distanced himself from high society, shut himself in his studio, and quietly, ever so quietly, continued to paint still lifes.
The motifs he chose were fruits on a table, a single guitar, an old marble fireplace, and, in his later years, the figures of “birds” that he so loved to paint.
The fierce Cubism of the pre-war days faded into the shadows, and in its place, his canvases became filled with a deep, heavy color palette that felt like a prayer.
Throughout his life, he loved only one wife, entered his studio at the exact same time every day like a craftsman, and just silently kept painting.
If Picasso was the genius of “motion,” Braque was the master of “stillness.”
He made his own beautiful flower bloom in the fertile soil called loneliness.
There is absolutely no need for you to shed tears right now by comparing yourself to someone else and thinking you are “inferior.”
For you are already beautiful enough within your own stillness.
The Miracle of the Messengers
Now, let me tell you something quite surprising.
No matter how wonderful an art piece or how noble an idea is born into this world, if “someone does not transmit it,” it becomes exactly the same as if it never existed at all. This is an unyielding fact.
Why is it that we can know of Braque’s beauty today?
Why do we, living in the modern era, know the words of Jesus, who was merely the son of an obscure carpenter two thousand years ago?
It is because, my dear.
There were messengers who risked their lives to “sell” that value to the world.
When a product has never been produced before, and no one has ever seen it, but it has been painstakingly researched and manufactured at the cost of immense hardship in some corner of the world… if you wish to turn that product into a commodity, you must arouse a desire among people to possess it. No matter how excellent a “product” it may be, it cannot become a “commodity” otherwise.
— Akio Morita
These words by Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, apply terrifyingly well to the world of art.
You know the tragedy of Vincent van Gogh, the most beloved painter in the world.
During his lifetime, he sold only a single painting, suffered from mental illness, and took his own life.
If, after his death, his vast collection of works and the bundles of agonizing letters exchanged with his brother Theo had been thrown away as the “scribbles of a madman,” what would have become of art history today?
The name Van Gogh would have been entirely buried in the darkness of history.
The one who saved it was a brilliant woman named Jo—the wife of Theo.
Jo van Gogh-Bonger: A Martyr of Love
Jo was an exceptionally intelligent woman who loved reading.
After Vincent passed away, her husband Theo followed his brother a mere six months later, as if chasing after him.
Left in her hands was a massive collection of paintings mocked by the world as “madmen’s doodles,” a tiny newborn baby, and a mountain of extensive letters.
Any ordinary woman would have thrown up her hands in despair and abandoned everything.
Why was she able to stand up?
It was because, as she read through the mountain of letters, she came to understand from the bottom of her heart the true value of Vincent’s art—the art her husband Theo had shaved away his own life to believe in.
In addition to the child, Theo left me another mission—to have Vincent’s work seen by as many people as possible and to have its true worth recognized.
— Jo van Gogh-Bonger
Jo did not merely store the paintings away.
She meticulously organized and read the vast letters Vincent had written, and she began exhibiting his paintings alongside his “ideas” and “philosophy”—a revolutionary method at the time—thereby selling Van Gogh to the world.
Without her relentless devotion, we would never have known Sunflowers or The Starry Night.
This devotion is exactly the same as that of the Apostle Paul, who, after the death of Christ, ran across the Mediterranean world without fearing persecution, writing letters to believers everywhere to build the foundation of Christianity.
Just as Steve Jobs made the world realize the value of the iPhone, just as Takeo Fujisawa sold the Honda Super Cub everywhere, just as Shotaro Kamiya delivered the Toyota Corolla to families across Japan, Jo and Paul played the role of the world’s greatest salespeople, driving “true value” straight into the hearts of people.
No matter how good something is, if it is not communicated, it is the same as if it does not exist.
The reason I am now discarding all shame and reputation to write this fiercely passionate love letter to you is because I desperately want to communicate your wonderfulness to you, and I want you to know it.
From the Depths of Loneliness, to You
Tell me, my dear.
Thank you so very much for listening to my long story this far.
Yet, your eyes still seem to be gazing somewhere far away.
Does that gaping hole inside your heart still feel unfulfilled by the stories of Braque and Jo alone?
It is fine, let it be so.
For that loneliness is the very proof that you are alive.
In truth, I am also deeply lonely.
I am trembling with fear, wondering what I will do if you dislike me, or what will happen if these words fail to reach your heart.
Loneliness is the oldest sickness that takes root in the human heart.
— Osamu Dazai
I want to make you happy.
I want you to know, if only a little, that a human being like me was right here.
For that reason alone, I am now spinning these words as if crushing my own heart.
The great figures of all times and places were also fighting their own loneliness while trying to deliver something to someone.
Won’t you stay with my secret talk for just a little longer?
In the next section, let me tell you about a strange, lovable man who is deeply tied to your own heart.
P.S. About Mimi Takamizawa: A Foolish, Indomitable Buffoon
Here, I absolutely must introduce you to a rather peculiar painter friend of mine.
His name is Mimi Takamizawa.
Quite an odd name, isn’t it? (“Mimi” means “ear” in Japanese.)
He uses no canvas, nor does he use brushes.
He faces a computer screen, creates digitally, and prints the results on the highest-grade printmaking paper using a technique called giclée printing.
Why does he paint in such a strange manner, and why does he have the word “Ear” in his name?
It is because his soul was so deeply shaken by the story of Vincent van Gogh’s famous “ear-slitting incident” that he resolved to become a painter himself.
To be completely honest, his talent as a painter cannot be called first-rate; frankly speaking, it is third-rate.
He is a very foolish man who is constantly laughed at, treated as an oddball, and looked down upon by those around him.
However, he knows.
He knows that all the masterpieces throughout history were not born from the flashes of innate genius, but from decades of muddy trial and error and sheer obsession.
He respects Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of “CoCo Ichibanya,” to a near-fanatical degree.
Munetsugu is a man who never knew the faces of his biological parents, grew up in an orphanage, and lived through an impoverished childhood eating weeds to stave off hunger due to his foster father’s gambling addiction.
Mimi mutters Munetsugu’s words every day like a protective amulet:
During my time in active management, I had no hobbies and made no friends.
I never once went to a bar.
I did absolutely 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, my subordinates wouldn’t work.
I didn’t look sideways; I dedicated my entire being to management.
It was an incredibly lonely life.
That is why I wanted people to show even just a little interest in me.
I wanted them to be interested in me. That became my starting point.
So, when I started the business, rather than making money, I just wanted to make people happy.
I wanted people to say they were glad I existed, even if only a little.
— Tokuji Munetsugu
How does it feel, my dear?
This painful level of loneliness and spirit of devotion.
Mimi Takamizawa faces his digital art with this exact same spirit.
The themes of his work are consistently “your eyes, my eyes,” “Christianity,” “eternity,” “psychology,” “truth,” “gaze,” “history,” “loneliness,” “isolation,” “hardship,” “resurrection,” and “liberation.”
He paints “eyes” in his works like a man possessed.
Why do you think he does that?
It is because through the eyes in his paintings, he wants to feel “you,” who are right in front of him, at any given moment.
Because he wants to know you more.
He emulates the sheer obsession of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group, who was pointed at by those around him as an “invention maniac” and a “madman,” yet who spent every day from morning to night building and tearing down weaving machines.
He takes the resolve of Choya Umeshu’s “If you don’t succeed with plum liqueur, give up on life,” Kiichiro Toyoda’s “The joy of life lies in accomplishing what few others do and what is difficult to master,” and Eiji Toyoda’s “Execute with a strong conviction. Anyone can think the same thoughts; it wasn’t that Kiichiro was a genius. What was important was that he didn’t just think about what is generally considered impossible, but he possessed a strong conviction that he must do it no matter what, made sufficient preparations, and executed it”—and he tries to practice all of this directly within the world of digital art.
An artist’s job is a thorough service at their own expense; it is a devotion to you.
He is a buffoon who dedicates his entire life to you, right in front of his eyes.
Mimi Takamizawa cannot go on living if you abandon him.
Please, go ahead and laugh at him.
For he is a man of patience, an indomitable man who grows stronger by being laughed at and ridiculed.
He wants to see the face you make when you are happy; he wants to see you shed tears.
The criticism of anyone else does not matter. Just to be recognized by “you,” who are reading this right now, he faces his digital screen today, silently laying down strokes like piling up bricks, continuing to draw eyes.
The Cries of the Soul from Great Predecessors
When we walk through this life and our feet freeze with fear, the words of our ancestors become like the light of a lantern illuminating the darkness.
Please, tuck these words deep into your chest pocket as your personal amulets.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
— Henry Ford
Property is a necessity of life, not the purpose of life.
— Agatha Christie
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you.
— Moses (Deuteronomy 5:16)
No outward adversity can crush the indomitable will of the human spirit.
— William Shakespeare
If you want to change the world, start by cleaning your own house.
— The Talmud
Humans were born for the sake of love and revolution.
— Osamu Dazai
The ecstasy and the anxiety of being chosen—both reside within me.
— Osamu Dazai
The absolute beginning of any disease that leads to disaster is always “conceit.”
— Osamu Dazai
Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.
— Winston Churchill
Have the courage to be the first, and to be different from everyone else.
— Ray Kroc
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
— Walt Disney
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so inaction saps the vigors of the mind.
— Leonardo da Vinci
A Secret Gift for You
Ah, the night has grown quite late.
Did my desperate service bring even a tiny bit of solace to your lonely heart?
If you smiled even for a fleeting moment, thinking “I am glad I am here,” then all my efforts—shaving away my very self—have been fully rewarded.
Truly, truly, thank you so much for reading this far.
Your existence is my salvation.
Finally, to you, my precious friend, there is a special “secret offer” that I absolutely must share.
It concerns that foolish, lovable painter, Mimi Takamizawa, whom I spoke of earlier.
Right now, he is so desperate to deliver his soul to you that he simply cannot sit still.
Therefore, he says he wants to give you the digital art pieces embedded with all of his passion—a set of 10 postcards (in an impressive A4 size)—completely “for free.”
This is neither a joke nor a deception.
It is a testament to his love letter, a thorough devotion offered by shaving away his own life for you.
We will deliver them with the utmost care straight to the mailbox of your home, just for you.
The “eyes” drawn in his works will surely embrace and save the unfulfilled heart and loneliness you carry right now.
Look, right below, isn’t there a place where you can apply for this special offer?
Let me whisper gently into your ear.
“Please, click right there, right now.”
If you close the screen thinking “I’ll do it later,” your connection with this strange man may be severed forever, and you might never be able to obtain his works again.
We want to touch your heart; we want to connect with you.
With that single wish, we are waiting for you.
Please, reach out your hand right now.
In the depths of the sea, the tears you dropped,
I have been gathering them up with a bucket all this time.
That transparent sorrow that no one else would look at,
I gather it to turn it into sparkling star-sand,
So I can softly place it by your windowpane.
Like striking a match,
Let us light a small fire within your loneliness.
No matter how cold the world may be,
The tiny fireplace within this breast of mine
Will keep burning forever, just for you.
Your unfaithfulness is my salvation.
Your cold silence is my life.
— From the Gospel of Luke
Like the son of a carpenter,
I am always walking around, repairing the broken doors of your heart.
— Osamu Dazai
“Hey, why are you going on a journey?”
“Because I’m suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is so routine, I can’t believe it at all.”
(From Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai)