The City Allows Even Social Roles to Be 'Adult Chuunibyou': A Supplement to the Previous Article [Short Monologue]

In my previous article, I mentioned that 'the city (Tokyo) has less of an "age-based role" compared to rural areas, making it easier for people from middle age onwards, regardless of gender, to look younger.'

Reading it over, I felt like adding a little supplement. Last time, I wrote mainly about the 'private side of things' (from the perspective of a Koenji resident), such as:

However, in reality, the uniqueness of the city of Tokyo seems to be more strongly reflected in 'work' rather than private life. Tokyo is not just 'a city where adult chuunibyou is permitted.' To be more precise, it is 'a city where chuunibyou-like desires can be publicly professionalized.'

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In rural communities, for better or worse, each occupation and industry tends to converge into the role of a 'proper adult.'

Primary industries. Civil servants. Teachers. Medical care. Construction. Civil engineering. Local businesses. Other infrastructure.

Of course, these are essential to society and are extremely important jobs that support local communities.

Or rather, since the population itself is smaller compared to cities, the proportion of labor resources is concentrated in 'essential industries.' Due to the structure, it is inevitable.

On the other hand, in Tokyo, there are:

There are also a large number of jobs that could be called 'extensions of personality or hobbies.'

I am probably one of the people who belongs to this category, and I have many friends from my university days who do as well, and I can easily encounter them while drinking in Koenji at night.

When I think of the faces of the drinking buddies I'm close with, there's a 'TV director at a production company for a major network,' or 'the president of a shop that imports and sells American comic goods.' In my hometown, these are the types of people I would never meet in my daily life.

If you think about it calmly, there are many professions that are unnecessary if 'humanity just wants to survive.' These are things considered 'waste or margins that we want to cherish.' However, modern cities have turned 'culture,' 'emotion,' 'leisure,' 'waste,' 'entertainment,' and 'self-expression' themselves into a massive industry.

That is why in the city, 'chuunibyou' can be not just a hobby, but 'a socially recognized job itself.'

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I don't know if this counts as an example, but back when I was in my 20s, at a class reunion held in my hometown, when I said that I was 'working as a creator at an advertising agency,'...

I have been asked that before.

Of course, this is partly about the individual's level of knowledge, but thinking about it now, I feel it wasn't just "ignorance," but rather a difference in the "types of professions encountered within that community."

In rural areas, the job of an "advertising agency creator" and the situations where that concept is used are relatively unlikely to appear in daily life. Probably.

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So, the content I wrote last time might have leaned too much toward "the topic of free will in private life."

Because private "youthful" hobbies require a certain degree of individual "conscious free activity."

But public social activities are not like that. There are "semi-public obligations" that arise, not just free will.

In other words, Tokyo (the city) is a place where the premise of "socially permitting Chuunibyou" exists because "social roles themselves" are proliferating in great variety.

That is why a 40-year-old with brightly dyed hair, an ad man who talks to his subordinates about the wonders of VTubers, or a working professional who happily declares to their boss that their hobby is bar-hopping from morning to noon, are not seen as "eccentrics" but as "well, they exist."

The above is about me, by the way.

The city does not permit deviation. It absorbs deviation and converts it into a social role.

Once again. That is why I don't find it hard to breathe here.

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