A Letter to Myself in the Past

Abstract

Since 2020, everything has changed with the worldwide spread of COVID-19 and the emergence of variants. In the field of humanities, we are still unable to figure out how to face such situation and how to translate it in the first place. One way is to relearn the representations of historical plagues and calamities, but it is a determined event of the past, and no one can judge whether it is effective as a means to solve the future situation. My essay takes the form of a letter written 10 years later by the future “I” to myself today. In the world 10 years later, “I,” who lives as a Komorîto, writes a letter to her/his past self, on the assumption that it is completely divided between two kinds of people：Gaishuto, who continue to live outside as they did before the Corona era, and Komorîto, who do not go out at all but simply stay at home. Like any other disciplines, humanities have a common understanding that we cannot talk about phenomena that are not fixed or that continue to vary. That’s why we get anxious. In this essay, I have ironically described a situation in which the content written in the writing process is quickly invalidated.