Haikyo

Over the last year or so I’ve posted a few sets of photographs from long-abandoned Japanese mountain villages. There was this incredibly photogenic little hamlet, and then more recently, the time capsule-like quality of a settlement tucked away in the trees.

The gathering of houses below, however, is a bit different. Or at least a bit different in the sense that I’ve visited it a couple times, and after recently finding a forgotten photo of a photo from when the village was still occupied, it seemed like a good idea to go back through my shots, do some re-edits, and then put them all together in a single series. A step back in time that was triggered by a much longer look into the past, and as such, I’ve included that old, undated image to round out the set, which sort of brings it all back full circle.

For a bit of background information, the village’s former residents were all hired by the forestry department, and considering the time and location, they would have lived quite isolated lives, with even basics such as food and fuel supplies requiring forward planning. An unusual existence compared to what most people are used to, and unlike their city dwelling compatriots, bears rather crowds or crime would have been a key concern. Day-to-day life that must have been as idilic as it was difficult, yet whatever the small community of workers made of it, human habitation came to an abrupt end in the late 1980s, when presumably due to a lack of employment, everyone simply packed up a few possessions and made their way down the mountain.

Over the last few years I’ve had the good fortune to photograph several abandoned mountain settlements not that far from Tokyo. There was this surprisingly large collection of houses and buildings, some remarkably intact homes of former forestry workers, and the crumbling structures of a long-empty hamlet.

This latest find doesn’t contain quite as many personal items as the others, but what it lacks in old photos and possessions, it makes up for in atmosphere. The late August heat and humidity meant there was no shortage of greenery, but at the same time the foliage blocked out a lot of the summer sun to create a suitably fitting half-light of sorts.

There are also enough houses and decay to offer intriguing hints about the lives once lived there, and indeed how long it has been since the last resident left. A slowly disappearing time capsule that is very much of a particular period and place, and yet there’s also a distinctly universal element at play as well, evoking as it does those ever-present human preoccupations of impermanence and the relentless passage of time.

A couple of months ago I put together a photo series of long-abandoned televisions. The dated technology and retro designs of such sets are always interesting, but for me at least, it’s the quietness they seem to emanate that really makes them special. Screens that families once sat around and socialised in front of now left unused and utterly silent, creating a weird sense of loss of sorts. A feeling I also get with old telephones, so it made sense to put together a similar collection.

At some point in the past we’ve all waited desperately for a phone to ring, or indeed dreaded that once common sound, but these old-school models, photographed over a period of 10 years or so, will never take a call again. All those long-ago conversations they were once privy to now lost in time — connections, both literal and otherwise, having disappeared forever into the void. Yet in many ways that doesn’t matter in the slightest, as looking at them now, almost entirely without context, it’s arguably just as interesting to speculate on who might have used them, and what they may have talked about.

When exploring in the far west of Tokyo last week, I was reminded of a bar out there and the absolutely lovely 93-year-old who owned it. A memory that in turn made me think about the area’s long-abandoned ropeway, as it was an attraction the old lady had actually ridden on when she was younger.

Open and ready for passengers at the start of 1962, the 622 metre cable car ride was, in part, built to capitalise on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Just like the 2020 Games, however, things didn’t quite work out as planned, and visitor numbers simply weren’t substantial enough. An outcome that perhaps shouldn’t have been all that surprising considering the out of the way location, the short, one-stop hop over a lake, and the meagre 0.6 metre height difference between stations. So a mere 4 years after it opened, operations were halted on December 1st 1966. Ostensibly just for the winter, it was an end of year break that lasted until 1975, when an official suspension was announced. A state the site has stayed in ever since — clearly never opening again, and yet at the same time never actually closing.

Left to slowly decay and staying pretty much untouched for decades, there’s now graffiti on the platform, plus more recently on at least one of the cable cars, so that aspect, and the slightly tenuous Olympic connection, seemed like as good a time as any to re-edit these photos from 8 years ago. A time when everything was almost as it was after that last journey over the lake more than 50 years ago.