"Seeking truth, beauty, and goodness to overturn commercialism and to emancipate culture and society"

"Seeking truth, beauty, and goodness
 to overturn commercialism and to emancipate culture and society"

(or Notes after Tsutomu Sawamura 

with views from Joseph Stalin and Deng Xiaoping)

Commercialism is an idea which seeks the greatest value of life in gold, while Materialism is an idea which finds the best value of life in material things. These are kindred ideas. In art, on the contrary, truth, goodness, and beauty in life are everything. 

There are those who believe that commercialism and materialism, getting more money and spending a luxurious life, sum up the happiness of life. And to acquire that happiness, they would do anything, even if it would be against the ethics of society. The artist in the other hand, is a missionary sent from heaven to protect the truth, goodness, and beauty of life. 

So, however simple his life so long as he may pursue these elements of truth, goodness, and beauty in life, he is contented. On the other hand, the commercialist even wants to enslave the art and utilise it as a means to acquire money, while the artist tries to teach these materialists the real worth of the spirit in life.

- Tsutomu Sawamura

Admittingly speaking,  that as time goes by, it seems that art hath been less emancipating as commercialism prevails over the spirit. To use Materialism seemed to be just though although that term can also be applied in the realities of life humanity sought to conquer.

As any other concerned artist, seeking for the beauty, truth, and goodness is a painstaking task that made some chose not to pursue and instead favour to treat their craft as any other money-making spree. True indeed that art can be renumerated with a just amount, but, conscience-driven artists knows that in spite of given grants, works shouldn’t be reduced to mere eye candies but mediums invoking messages enough to make humanity aware that reality demands what is true, good, and beautiful what the present order fails to present.

And from reading Tsutomu Sawamura’s message, it shows that he was like any other philosopher who tries to counter materialism, if not to ridicule Marxism with its emphasis on material (or what is seen) over the ideal (innate in the mind); but, Marxism isn’t about the pursuit of attaining the needs of humanity but rather having the will to have the power to gain the tools to create man’s needs far from its prerevolutionary limitations; if not to struggle to emancipate humanity from the borders imposed by their respective systems and its ringleaders. With the fact that men like Joseph Stalin and Deng Xiaoping invoked messages similar to Sawamura's aspiration for an emancipating art from commercialism such as “engineers of the Human soul” and “Seeking Truth from Facts” as descriptions and objectives of each and every artist, regardless of its craft.

Perhaps, since Sawamura limits materialism to blatant economic materialism/consumerism (that makes two thoughts as indistinguishable than kindred thoughts), he failed to notice that Materialism isn't about an idea which seeks the best value in life merely through material things, and if to use Marx's Dialectical materialism, it examines the subjects of the world in relation to each other within a dynamic, evolutionary environment. 

Society evolves as humanity continues to take its quest in seeking society's idealised perfectness, and in it requires developing its surroundings and that includes the people. But, before developing one has to develop its own self; in order to give nourishment to the people, one must also first absorb its own self nourishment. And who is to develop and nourish every writer and artist? To cite Deng Xiaoping, that according to Marxism, the answer can only be: the people. For the people, being the primary creator of both society and history, is driven by its desire to create what is just if not ideal to invoke what is deemed "true, good, and beautiful", therefore provide them what truly appeals, and to break the mental shackles fastened on them.

Nowadays, that late Japanese Critic and scenarist's message may still worth approving, but then reality demands the acceptance of a materialist truth: that man’s existence lies in its surroundings, of its realities, and from it lies the desire to put changes that is truly true, good, and beautiful.

And from there, to cite Stalin:

 "The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks... And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul".