【Kunihiko Hisa's Manga Anything Theater (Special Edition)】Non-essential and Non-urgent

2020/09/08

Recently, thanks to COVID-19, the phrase "non-essential and non-urgent" has been flying around everywhere. "Is that outing non-essential and non-urgent?" "Please refrain from non-essential and non-urgent outings." "Is that meeting non-essential and non-urgent?" "Is that shopping trip non-essential and non-urgent?" The value standards for all sorts of things have come to be measured by the yardstick of "non-essential and non-urgent."

"Non-essential and non-urgent" basically means something you don't have to do in a hurry right now, or something that is fine to put off until later. While I was thinking about this, the government issued a state of emergency and provided examples of what constitutes non-essential and non-urgent. According to them, gatherings of people are prohibited in principle. Food sections in the basements of department stores are necessary, so please stay open. However, the main department store buildings are asked to voluntarily close. That sort of thing. Bookstores are fine, but second-hand bookstores should close; super sento (large bathhouses) and saunas should close, but regular sento are necessary for public hygiene, so please stay open. Live music venues, movie theaters, theaters, yose (vaudeville theaters), sports matches, concerts, exhibitions, theme parks, and various other events where people might gather were all asked to close. Schools were also deemed non-essential and non-urgent and were closed. Public facilities such as libraries, museums, art galleries, zoos, and aquariums also shut down. "Please do not take non-essential and non-urgent trips," "Refrain from commuting and telework if you can work from home"—thanks to these notices, social life changed completely.

First of all, commuting trains became truly empty. I was surprised at just how much "non-essential and non-urgent" commuting there had been. Pachinko parlors and restaurants like izakaya voluntarily closed. Bookstores were supposed to be allowed to stay open, but because the department stores and station buildings that house large bookstores all voluntarily closed, they ended up shutting down too. Mass retailers like Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera also closed. It became a strange town where almost every shop except for grocery stores was closed.

Now, what kind of changes did this non-essential and non-urgent lifestyle of self-restraint bring to the life of a manga artist, who is originally a shut-in with a lot of work at home? Or rather, for the first time, I could see the life that I usually wasn't particularly conscious of. I realized that even though I tended to be a shut-in, I actually went out quite a bit for one thing or another. Judging art and attending award ceremonies, giving talks at libraries, meetings for an African support group I help with at an NGO, council meetings for several organizations where I serve as a councilor, regular meetings for hobby groups, business meetings, and dinners... besides those, there were exhibitions, friends' solo shows, movies, and events. If I counted them, there was an endless stream of small errands, and I was going out quite a bit. I also go to get blood pressure medication and visit the dentist. In such a schedule, if I were to name things that weren't non-essential and non-urgent, it would probably only be the blood pressure medicine and the dental treatment.

Then, in an atmosphere where everything was deemed non-essential and non-urgent and all gatherings were to be avoided, almost all my plans disappeared, and I literally became a shut-in. Apparently, if you just look at documents at home, stamp them with your seal, and send them back, it counts as having had a meeting. Even for small meetings or appointments, the "non-essential and non-urgent" time I used to spend—like stopping by a bookstore on the way, looking for stationery, peeking into a plastic model shop, or watching a movie if I had time—all vanished.

On the other hand, we live in an age where people say you can just buy books and plastic models on Amazon, and if you want to watch a movie, you can watch all sorts of things via online streaming instead of going to a theater. Certainly, for buying a specific book or model that you already know about, Amazon or Yahoo are perfect. They deliver quickly, and for a generation that knows the inconvenience of ordering old books in the past, it's a miracle-like feat. Even with movies, although it's different from the big screen, you can watch anything. In fact, I watched so many movies during this period of self-restraint. Re-watching movies at home that I had seen in theaters long ago brought back many deep emotions. As part of the generation that received a baptism of American films after the war, Westerns were particularly interesting. The sense of the era in the scripts and settings was incredibly discriminatory toward Native Americans, yet conversely, the visuals sometimes treated Native American culture with care; the inconsistency was indescribable. The development of the American West after the Civil War is a story of white people with guns developing land that supposedly had no owner as if it were their own. I could feel instinctively that American Indians were treated as nothing more than obstacles living in the wilderness, like coyotes, wolves, or buffalo. Watching movies online was a new discovery because I could search for countless films that aren't shown in theaters. However, I didn't realize at the time that this new discovery would lead to a lack of exercise and cause so-called "COVID weight gain." The COVID crisis reaches into unexpected places.

Reading the books that had piled up and looking at the contents of the mountain of plastic model boxes was fun at first, but it inevitably lacked stimulation. The excitement of encountering something unknown is scarce. It seems that most of that excitement is consumed at the moment of buying the book or the plastic model. It was especially hard not being able to browse second-hand bookstores, stationery shops, or antique shops. I realized that the things I find fun and the things I'm interested in are, in the end, all lumped together under the category of "non-essential and non-urgent." The non-essential and non-urgent things the government talks about—sightseeing trips, theater, parties, sports, concerts—are all fun things. People gather where there is fun. This is just like the self-restraint during the war, with slogans like "Luxury is the enemy," "I won't want anything until we win," and "Let's stop getting perms." Moreover, a nasty atmosphere has begun to fill the air, with "self-restraint police" appearing and applying peer pressure.

Even if I go to the dentist because it's not non-essential and non-urgent, if everything around is closed and I can't peek into a bookstore, a stationery shop, or a soba shop, then I've just had a painful time with my teeth, and the day ends in sadness. This request for self-restraint made me realize how much those "non-essential and non-urgent" things are necessary for our lives, providing enrichment and the joy of living. I want a society where it is natural to be able to go anywhere freely and meet people. No matter how many movies I can watch on video, it would be a huge shock if, once the self-restraint ends, the movie theaters, restaurants, second-hand bookstores, and plastic model shops have all gone out of business. If the government is going to request self-restraint for this kind of culture, I want them to provide proper compensation and cherish it. These were my thoughts during the days of the COVID crisis, hoping for such a country.