Haikyo

Opening way back in 1929, the societal and historical changes this small, 800 metre cable car system has seen are hard to comprehend. It was also witness to similarly massive shifts in tourism and transportation trends, which ultimately lead to its closure in the early 2000s.

Now, almost a century since operations began, it stands quiet and unused, with the last remaining cable car left open, but also looked after. A well deserved retirement in many ways, and a fitting tribute to a very different time.

Abandoned homes in particular have a quiet poignance that is genuinely touching. Spaces and long-left belongings that tell of lives lived and likely also lost. Hotels, on the other hand, are often interesting due to their dated decor, along with a sense of faded glamour and increasingly distant holiday memories.

The structure below, however, was very different. Vandalism, and the truly massive damage caused by time and the environment, made for scenes that were way more post-apocalyptic than poignant. That decay, along with the remnants of human life, made it incredibly interesting to explore, plus the grey and cold conditions matched the similarly bleak interiors.

Opening in 1960, the hotel was clearly quite something when looking at the brochure — the comparisons with its current state being striking to say the least — but the presence of small, portable TVs even though it didn’t close until 2002, suggest its decline was a long and gradual one. A lack of modernisation that would have resulted in a similar decline in visitor numbers, making renovation funding even more difficult to find. Add to that changing tourism trends over its lifespan, and closure was probably the only realistic outcome, culminating in the shocking, but also truly fascinating scenes below.

These photos were taken almost exactly 6 years ago, and as I was recently reminded of them, I decided to go back and both re-visit and re-edit some of what I originally shot.

The village was a combination of open, sealed and collapsed structures, and whereas some of them had been abandoned for 40 years or so, others were inhabited as comparatively recently as 2012. A mine closure in the area was the likely cause of people leaving in the 1980s, but signs of agriculture helps explain why other residents stayed on.

Those are the only real details we could glean, and even they are rather lacking. It was the same in regards any genuine information about the people who once lived there, except for what some of them looked like, and to a small degree, what their lives may have involved. Elements that together made the village the fascinating find it was, and also what prompted me to look back at the photos again, with the recent publication of an interview I did with Tokyo Weekender magazine being the initial catalyst.

In recent years quite a bit of my work has involved trying to capture moments and scenes that represent the before and after, all of which is covered in the article. And this village was probably the first time I properly documented (or at least properly understood) the power and importance of taking such photographs. The poignancy of faces staring back, along with the almost palpable silence of places that were once filled with people, voices and music are hard to ignore. Moments that while long gone, can now at least be imagined, which in a way allows them to be remembered once again.

There’s no shortage of abandoned homes and small settlements on these pages. Places that provide hints of stories, but little in the way of real facts. The train below, on the other hand, is very different.

Approaching the location there was the growing worry that what we were planning to photograph wouldn’t actually be there. On a trip several years ago we’d missed a similar find, as after being left abandoned for years, the locomotive we wanted to see had frustratingly been taken away mere months before our visit. Thankfully there wasn’t a repeat of that disappointment. Quite the opposite in fact, as the train turned out to be more impressive than either of us had dared to imagine.

Also, unlike those aforementioned former homes, there’s an easily pieced together backstory. The carriage was in use until 1985, but rather than being scrapped at the end of its scheduled life, it was restored, given a new home, and thus saved for posterity. The very same spot it still stands in today, only the museum that housed and maintained it closed for business around the turn of the century. A fate that also befell the line the train was once used on, as after beginning operations in 1923, it ceased the majority of its services in 1985, and then finally carried its last passengers on October 4th 1999.

All of which are interesting details, but what really sets the carriage apart, at least for me personally, is the incredible level of decay. A unique kind of beauty that made simply being there as the light slowly faded feel very special indeed.