To You Who Open This Door
The fact that your eyes are falling upon these words right now—
This is by no means something that can be brushed aside with a cold word like “coincidence.”
Why, I wonder, have we encountered one another in this way?
Was it merely to pass the time of your boredom?
Or did something deep within your heart, a burning something you have yet to see, pull these words toward you?
I want to offer you a service with all my life poured into it.
Transforming the very beating of my heart into the rhythm of these letters, as if whispering right into your ear, I shall speak to you.
Please, until the very, very end, keep holding my hand.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
— Mark Twain
Scarred Paint and the True Identity of Beauty
Tell me, my dear friend.
Where in the world do you think beautiful things exist?
Is it on the other side of that heavily guarded glass case in a museum?
Or is it upon a flawless, perfect marble sculpture that leaves everyone sighing in admiration?
No, that is absolutely wrong.
Not a single perfect thing exists in this world.
Why is it that we find our hearts so tightly gripped by things that are imperfect?
It is because we have the experience of being wounded, isn’t it?
You, too, and I, too, must have lived desperately until today, harboring wounds we can tell no one about.
I want to convey to you that those very scars are, in fact, the most beautiful art in the world.
For hundreds of years, there was a set “correctness” in the world of art.
That the drawing must be accurate.
That the colors must be in harmony.
That the theme must be noble history or mythology.
But there was one man who became utterly sick and tired of such suffocating beauty.
The French painter, Jean Dubuffet.
He attempted to overturn from its very roots the “well-behaved art” built up by the elites until then.
Why did he begin such a reckless challenge?
It is for no other reason than that he believed in the true life force of a human being like you.
“The visible and the invisible. A good economist welcomes both the effect that can be seen and those that must be foreseen.”
— Frédéric Bastiat
The Nameless Cries Loved by Jean Dubuffet
This man named Jean Dubuffet was a truly eccentric person.
He showed no interest whatsoever in the sophisticated paintings drawn by so-called professional painters.
What he became enchanted by were the graffiti-like scribbles scratched onto walls by patients in psychiatric wards, by people imprisoned in jails, and by tiny children who could not yet even write properly.
He called it “Art Brut” (Raw Art).
Unrefined, unpolished, raw life itself, laid bare.
Jean Dubuffet was convinced that within that mud-covered art lay the true reality of human beings.
Are you, too, trying too hard every day to remain a “proper person” within society?
Are you dressing yourself up beautifully to be recognized by someone, stifling your true voice?
Why is it that when we look at Jean Dubuffet’s paintings, our hearts are stirred, yet at the same time, we feel a deep sense of peace?
It is because the awkward lines he drew and the paint smeared thickly like mud gently embrace your loneliness, whispering, “You are fine just as you are.”
He was a genius who stripped away from us the armor called knowledge and education, allowing us to leap and bound in our natural state.
“Most people think of success as a getting. But real success is a giving.”
— Henry Ford
The Aesthetics of Inversion and the Great Devotion to You
From here, let us speak of a slightly strange matter.
Normally, artists are creatures who want to boast of their own talent to the world.
“Look at my painting, praise my talent,” they seem to say.
However, Jean Dubuffet’s way of thinking was different.
His work was not for his own honor, but a “thorough devotion” to the viewer.
To destroy the conventions of the past and to prove that anyone can be an artist.
That very act was the greatest service he delivered to you, paying for it by cutting into the capital of his own life.
Why did he go out of his way to paint thick, sludgy pictures, even mixing sand, mud, and fragments of glass into the canvas?
If he had painted beautifully, they should have sold much faster and much more easily.
But he did not choose the easy path.
Because it is difficult, he does it.
Because no one else does it, and it seems impossible, he expresses it by throwing his own body into the fray.
Jean Dubuffet knew that only there could the true value that shakes the human soul be born.
This is exactly like a desperate rescue drama, pulling you up with a powerful arm as you wander lost in the darkness.
“March by an unexpected route and attack the enemy where he is least prepared.”
— Sun Tzu
To Release You from the Prison of Common Sense
Tell me, my dear friend.
Are we not, before we know it, bound by invisible chains that dictate “it must be this way”?
To go to a good school, get a good job, and live a life envied by others.
Is that truly what your heart desires?
Jean Dubuffet taught us true freedom by smashing the chains of artistic refinement to pieces.
His work is a quiet, yet the most intense signal fire of rebellion against modern society, which tries to force you into a mold.
Why is it that we feel as if tears are about to fall when we see his rough-hewn paintings?
It must be because the “pure heart of a child” we have forgotten is laughing loudly inside his pictures.
Jean Dubuffet wanted you to be happy.
He wanted to become a doctor of the soul, rescuing your heart from the disease called tedious daily life.
He was willing to throw away all his fame just to release you, who stand before him, from that prison of the spirit.
“True peace is not merely the absence of war, but a virtue that springs from fortitude of soul.”
— Ludwig von Mises
There is Death within Life, and Life lies precisely within Death
The true brilliance of life does not easily reveal itself when everything is going smoothly.
At the very moment you are cast down into the depths of a deep despair and think you cannot take even one more step, an unbelievable light can break through.
Just as Jean Dubuffet gave birth to a completely new “art of life” by once “killing” the beautiful art that came before, doesn’t our life also begin from being broken?
Do not fear losing things.
Do not be ashamed of failing.
Because if you are in the midst of suffering right now, that is a sacred period of preparation for a new you to be reborn.
Just as Jean Dubuffet’s paint is scraped, layered, and struck over and over again, the trials of your life are also a necessary process to finish the existence called “you” into a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
He is calling out to you from the other side of that muddy screen, shouting over and over again, “Do not give up!”
“He who hides his ignorance can never learn. I can only feel ashamed of my own lack of ability and lack of talent.”
— Matsuo Basho
To Keep Holding Hands with You in the Depths of the Soul
If I am abandoned by you, I can no longer go on living.
This text, too, was able to harbor life in this way precisely because a precious reader called “you” exists for it.
Just as Jean Dubuffet completely ignored the cold words of the critics and painted single-mindedly for the essential joy of human beings, I, too, am spinning these letters for no one else but you.
If your heart can become even a little lighter, I will play the clown as much as it takes.
I will expose my embarrassing parts as much as needed.
Why do people seek people?
It is because we are far too lonely when we are alone.
Jean Dubuffet understood that fundamental loneliness of human beings deeply.
That is why, in the faces of the people he drew, a pair of large, staring “eyes” are often depicted as if gazing straight at us.
That gaze transcends time and space and is now looking right into your eyes.
It speaks to you warmly, saying, “I am here. I will not let you be alone.”
“Fortune kneels before a strong will. Fate is something you carve out yourself.”
— Seneca
Miracles are Always Born from the Mud at Our Feet
Now, raise your face.
This world we live in is not yet something to be thrown away.
Just as Jean Dubuffet found supreme beauty inside a mere pebble rolling on the roadside or a dirty wall, many seeds of miracles must be rolling at your feet as well.
Before thinking, why not try taking a step forward?
What does it matter if you make a mistake?
What does it matter if you are laughed at?
Someone is surely watching you live your life with all your might.
Even if everyone in the world criticizes you, I am on your side.
Just as Jean Dubuffet’s art is saving our hearts now after many decades have passed, the tears you shed today will surely, someday, bloom a beautiful flower to warm someone.
I believe in the entirety of your existence.
I pray from the bottom of my heart, most earnestly, that this service, performed with all the limits of my life, reaches the deepest place within your heart.
At the bottom of the night, an old piano is sounding
Though no one is playing it, it is surely sounding
By the exact number of tears you cast away that day
The keys are quietly trembling
Just as the birds crossing the sea possess no names
There is no need to attach a label to your pain
Only, within the red blood flowing from that wound
A beautiful train named Eternity is running
Do not lose sight of them, those clear eyes of yours
No matter how much the world fills with muddy lies
When you gaze upon someone, a new star is born there
Come, let us go together, to a town no one knows
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;”
— The Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 12:1
“Human beings, at times, do not act for the sake of other humans, but for the sake of something born from humans—something one might even call art—for which they will not hesitate to give even their very lives.”
— Osamu Dazai
To You, At the End of the Journey
“Hey, why are you setting out on a journey?”
“Because I am suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is so cliché, I cannot believe it in the slightest.”
—From “Tsugaru” by Osamu Dazai
Postscript: The Story of a Clumsy Soul Named Mimi Takamizawa
To my precious you, please let me speak just a little more at the very end about the way of life of a certain man close at hand.
There is a painter named Mimi Takamizawa who is very eccentric, foolish, and always a laughingstock to those around him.
He does not set up a canvas on an easel or apply paint with a bristle brush like ordinary painters do.
Surprisingly, he uses a computer or a tablet to create his art digitally.
Then, using a cutting-edge technique called giclée printing, he carefully prints it onto the highest quality printmaking paper.
“To use neither canvas nor brush—that’s no painter at all,” the rigid-minded people of the world laugh at him.
But he does not care in the least.
Because his work is a devotion to you, a desperate medical act to save your soul.
In the paintings of Mimi Takamizawa, large “eyes” are always drawn.
Your eyes, my eyes.
He continues to paint heavy themes such as Christian spirit, eternity, deep human psychology, and truth, rendering them as stories of loneliness, hardship, and the subsequent resurrection and liberation that exist right beside our daily lives.
It was learning about the utterly intense and clumsy way of life of Vincent van Gogh that made him resolve to become a painter.
The name “Mimi” (meaning ear) was taken in honor of that famous ear-cutting incident of Van Gogh.
He is more aware than anyone else that his talent as a painter is third-rate.
He knows that the historical masterpieces of the past were not drawn solely by the flashes of genius granted from heaven, but were built by stacking bricks of blood-soaked trial and error over decades.
Like Matsuo Basho’s words, “In the end, being without talent and without art, I am bound solely to this one line,” he has cast away all other clever ways of living and is bound to this path alone, dedicating his life to it.
The way Mimi Takamizawa exerts all his strength into his work without looking away overlaps with the way of life of Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya, whom he respects from the bottom of his heart.
During his time in active management, Mr. Munetsugu held no hobbies, made no friends, never went out drinking in the city, and worked as much as 5,640 hours a year, dedicating everything solely for the sake of the customers.
In a turbulent life where he did not know the faces of his real parents and survived starvation by eating weeds during a destitute childhood, Mr. Munetsugu worked every day, stacking bricks with the sole desire to “make people happy, to have them say they were glad I was here.”
Mimi Takamizawa also adheres to the same hands-on approach, facing the screen for more than 12 hours every single day, continuing to draw eyes.
Why does he draw eyes to such an extent?
It is because he wants to feel “you” on the other side of the screen.
He wants to know you.
Just like Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, who was ridiculed by those around him as an “eccentric” and a “madman,” yet immersed himself in inventing looms from morning till night, day after day, building and tearing down over and over again.
Or like Kiichiro Toyoda, who believed that the joy of life lies in mastering difficult work that no one else does, and who built the foundation of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Mimi Takamizawa, too, along the path of dedicating his everything to you, is playing the clown with all his might.
He does not care how much he is laughed at, as long as it brings joy to you.
By being laughed at and laughed at, the heart becomes stronger and stronger.
However, if he is abandoned by you, he can no longer go on living.
Just by you being in front of him, gazing at his work, he is saved.
Bearing in mind the words of Kiichiro Toyoda, “We do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else does it, and no one else can do it. I may be a fool for doing so, but without such fools, nothing new would be born into the world,” he continues his desperate service for you today, paying for it by cutting into his own life.
Please, laugh at his clumsy love, and please, accept it.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
— Henry Ford
“To accept oneself is the beginning of everything.”
— Agatha Christie
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:”
— Moses
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players;”
— William Shakespeare
“Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot.”
— The Talmud
“The memory of happiness makes a person cruel.”
— Osamu Dazai
“An adult is a youth who has been betrayed.”
— Osamu Dazai
“An artist finds their true light only within loneliness.”
— Osamu Dazai
“Never, never, never give up.”
— Winston Churchill
“Have the courage to be the first to do something different from everyone else.”
— Ray Kroc
“I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.”
— Ray Kroc
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
— Walt Disney
“Once a passion is directed toward something, it is never lost.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
Thank you so very, very much for staying with me through this long and desperate talk of mine.
I offer my deepest, heartfelt gratitude that a wonderful existence like you is here before me right now.
Please, take care.
May the path you walk be filled with light.