Haikyo

Some haikyo (abandoned buildings) are without a doubt incredibly sad, preserving, as they often do, a very personal document of a total stranger’s life. At the same time, others can be genuinely disturbing, due to the mutilated and decaying recreations of life that have been left behind. But now and again it is possible to find a place that is simply beautiful. Like this old post office that was closed in the early 90s.

Exterior-wise it’s relatively interesting, as it makes a nice change from most modern Japanese buildings. It’s inside, however, where the real beauty lies. A space that despite being small and only sparsely furnished, has a warm, welcoming feel to it, making it a genuinely nice place to simply stand and soak up the atmosphere.

Plus as an added bonus, the adjoining room is slowly succumbing to nature — a sight that is always a pleasure to see.

And finally, as a suitably nice send off, there’s a personal item left by one of the people who used to work there all those years ago.

After way too long, I’ve finally put together an abandoned section in my portfolio site. Imaginatively titled, The abandoned, it highlights some of the things I’ve found in a variety of buildings over the years. To take a look, just click here.

Hemmed in by a new car park on one side and a ditch on the other, this abandoned house is small and basic to say the least. There’s no bathroom. Not even a toilet. A shared breeze-block outhouse being the only facility. Plus, as far as a kitchen goes, it was presumably a case of making do with a two ring gas table near the door. Yet despite the building’s size and rather primitive nature, until July 2005 its two rooms were clearly very much a home for the old lady who lived there.

A tiny, rectangular space as one entered acting as a living room, dining room and pretty much everything except a bedroom.

Up some terrifyingly steep and narrow stairs one finds the latter. A room that was so sad and silent that the opening verses of John Betjeman’s Death in Leamington seemed unsettlingly apt:

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev’ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa.

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work’d it
Were dead as the spoken word.

Western Village first opened its doors back in the early 1970s. Originally quite a modest affair known as Kinugawa Family Ranch, the Wild West theme park did well and gradually expanded, hence the name change. Yet despite such success, changing times resulted in changing fortunes, and in 2006 it was forced to close — meaning that the park now sits empty and forlorn by the side of the road. An odd, wholly unexpected sight in a relatively sparsely populated area a few hours north of Tokyo.

Increasingly battered by the weather and years of neglect, it nonetheless still retains the look one would expect.

Visiting at the end of a politically tumultuous 2016, however, it wasn’t these out of place structures that made an impact. Instead, it was the park’s haunted looking residents and their unintended, yet no less terrifying depiction of a world turned utterly upside down. The world in which we currently live in, basically.

Considering its theme, and the period in which Western Village opened, it’s perhaps not surprising that one particular, distinctly larger-than-life personality was chosen to front it.

And, as a follicly challenged right winger with a weirdly orange complexion, such a choice seems disturbingly prescient.

So now, instead of an innocent recreation of all things cowboy-related, this celebrity led world feels like a truly disturbing vision of a potentially very near future. One in which the inner machinations and ulterior motives of those pulling the presidential strings are very much to the fore.

While those set to benefit blithely carry on — wilfully ignorant of the slow, piecemeal disintegration of everything they are supposed to stand for.

And such blatant disregard for procedure and accountability is cynically carried out while the masses are kept mostly in the dark by complicit organisations happy — or at the very least content — to peddle untruths and create distractions.

Leaving those in opposition vilified, confused and increasingly isolated.

Rendering them utterly unable to stop the legacy of a once proud party being completely desecrated.

The whole horrid state of affairs culminating in a genuinely great country being reduced to nothing but its greatest fear(s).

Completed in 1936, northern Japan’s Esashi train line ran for a scenic 42kms. Stretching from coast to coast, it served small, inland villages — offering a service that must have once been nothing short of essential. The combination of motorisation, better roads and a decreasing population, however, gradually left the route with an ever-dwindling number of passengers. A situation that meant by 2011, only 6 far from busy return services a day were in operation. And while presumably still relied upon by some, in strictly financial terms, it simply wasn’t viable. So 12 months later, the decision to close the line was announced, and on May 11, 2014, the last trains trundled along the tracks.

Fast-forward a little over 2 years, and the photographs below show what’s left: a small selection of unique, abandoned and wonderfully quaint local stations. Unfortunately a couple of them have already been destroyed or repurposed, and down to nothing but sheer good fortune, a demolition crew arrived at another one just as we had finished photographing it. There were ominous signs the rest would suffer the same fate too. So these images are a personal reminder of a wonderful day, and rather unexpectedly, also a document of what will soon sadly cease to exist.

Faded and rundown resort towns are plentiful in Japan; incredibly forlorn looking places that say a lot about the country’s past, and maybe even more about its future.

Once populated by scores of couples and young families on short breaks, they are now far quieter, with shuttered up shops hinting at businesses that once were, but almost certainly never will be again. And just as shops and the like suffer, so do hotels, with the inevitable decline in occupancy hitting profits hard; money that in part would have been used to upgrade the rooms and facilities to keep them competitive. A vicious circle that makes such accommodation increasingly less appealing, which in turn further hits earnings and makes any kind of refurbishment more or less impossible. The inevitable outcome of which is closure.

Hotel Omiya closed its doors some time in the early 90s, although rather oddly the final nail in the coffin was apparently a lift accident — the resultant fine proving too much for the presumably ailing business to pay. But even back then the whole building must have been terribly dated, and now, after considerable acts of vandalism and years of exposure to the elements, pretty much any sense of its former grandeur has gone.

That said, the aforementioned wanton destruction and weather have resulted in the unexpected beauty of nature beginning to take the place back — a factor that’s very noticeable on the higher floors, with carpets now better described as lush.

In more sheltered spots the invasion isn’t anywhere near as pronounced, but the slower process is still just as appealing.

Elsewhere, like so many abandoned structures in Japan, there are left behind signs of former life.

Along with a scene that suggests someone was actually living there at some point. For what appeared to be quite a while too.

But now — as it has been for most of the last two decades or so — there are no people. No noises either. Just an unnatural, sort of muffled silence, if that makes any sense.

Along with the far more common sensation of long lost memories.