Where Did That Place Go? Memories of Living as a Newspaper Scholarship Student

🔗 Short clip (main feature at the end)

Hello, this is Bell note.

I would like to introduce a documentary work I just released on YouTube, which was written with the help of AI.
The theme is—the newspaper scholarship student system.

🖋 Once more, about 'something' I couldn't write down

I have written about this theme on note several times before.
But every time I finished an article, some kind of vague feeling remained deep in my heart...

'I haven't written it all yet'
That feeling has been with me the whole time.

The atmosphere of that time, the fragments of thoughts I couldn't put into words.
It felt like I hadn't been able to scoop them all up, like a 'piece was still missing'.

🖋 An unfinished manuscript became a video

Actually, a while ago, there was a manuscript I had started writing based on those thoughts.
But my pen stopped halfway, and that was it.

This video work is something I faced again from that point, and
reconstructed as a narration script.

🖋 Thoughts put into the title

The title is—
'Video Memories Special | The Loss of Place Caused by the Elimination of Black Labor'

Although I worried about it a little, I settled on these words.

However,the theme I wanted to convey was clear from the beginning.

It is—
an attempt to re-examine the 'newspaper scholarship student system,' a mechanism that might quietly disappear now, as someone who was once 'on the inside'.

🖋 I also once lived as a newspaper scholarship student.

I lived on the second floor of a newspaper distribution center.
In an old wooden building, I slept in a small room with only partitions, working every day and going to school.

The life of a newspaper scholarship student—honestly, it cannot be expressed in half-hearted words.
Waking up in the middle of the night before dawn, delivering newspapers in rain or snow, going to school, and then delivering again from the evening.
When I returned, the chores of the distribution center and the tension of communal living awaited me.

There were days when I couldn't eat or sleep properly.
It was those kinds of days, where fatigue, loneliness, and anxiety gradually ate away at my body.

Even so—
Without that system, I would never have been able to go to school.
Because it covered both tuition and living expenses, I was able to graduate without carrying any debt.

That said, I cannot by any means say that the environment was 'good'.
Even if there were parts of me that became stronger, I believe I must not forget that there were friends who broke down along the way.

And now—
Due to the decline in newspaper readership, the diversification of media, and the re-evaluation of labor environments,
newspaper distributorships themselves are gradually disappearing, and the system itself is being forced to shrink.

Of course, that is the flow of the times.
I, too, sincerely believe that working environments should be 'decent'.

But—
I find myself wondering.

“Where are the people who had no choice but to rely on that system,
and how are they living now?”

This video project began with that very question.

🖋 In this video, I have turned my gaze toward the 'shadows' of the system while layering in my own experiences.

And, toward the people who were involved in it—

I have tried to depict, with as much heart as possible, not only the young people who were newspaper scholarship students, but also the existence of adults carrying their own wounds—people who were able to survive precisely because they were in the somewhat 'closed world' of a newspaper distributorship, clinging to the very edges of society.

In that world, there were not a few people who could not work at 'normal' jobs.
Those people, too, needed a place in society to keep from falling into true darkness.

A place to live while remaining connected to society.

—Perhaps that distributorship was one of the places where such people were able to hold on by the skin of their teeth.

The tone of the video may be quiet and somewhat dark overall.

It lacks glamour, but in exchange, the thoughts and conflicts flowing through it are by no means light.

At this rate, the system will likely disappear quietly before long.

Perhaps that, too, is something we must accept as the flow of the times.

But—

That there were indeed people who 'tried to live' within that system.

And that there were workplaces that barely managed to function precisely because those people existed.

That is the one thing I wanted to make sure I remembered properly.

And for the future, even if it were in a different form—

If we could leave behind some kind of system somewhere in society where such people could find a 'place to belong' once again.

That is my own modest wish, which I have poured into this work.

🎥 Click here for the main video

※In the background of this, there is also the note I wrote previously below. If you read it as well, it might deepen your understanding of this video.

Thank you for reading this far.

I would be happy if you felt free to send me your comments or thoughts.

🔔Bell