Haikyo Gallery

The Haikyo Gallery features the haikyo (ruins) explorations of blog author Michael John Grist in Japan.

‘Haikyo’ is a Japanese word that simply means ruin, or abandonment. They’re the places that fell between the cracks; the old mining town in the mountains that died when the copper seams ran dry, the outlandish theme park that failed when the Bubble burst, the US Air Force Base abandoned to nature’s brambles.

To read more about Grist’s haikyo shots in magazines and books, go to the about page. For a guided introduction to haikyo, look at the top ten of 2009, or the top ten overall.

sexindustry

ww2

theme parks

ghost towns

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Jungle Park #1. Exterior	Jungle Park #2. Interior

Izu’s Jungle Park is an immense abandoned green house, an indoor botanical garden sheltering nearly 10,000 square meters worth of sweltering tropical habitat.	Jungle Park was easily the biggest green-house I’ve ever been in, and boy was it hot inside. H-O-T. And very humid. Within minutes I was soaked to the skin, and any time I had to climb something I was panting with the exertion
Jungle Park #3. Souvenir Shop	Izu Roadside Haikyo

Across the road from Jungle Park was this smashed-up restaurant/souvenir shop. I`ll guess it wasn`t actually connected to the theme park, though it probably survived on the tourists who came there.	Here`s a haikyo I chanced upon almost a year ago in Izu, while haikyoing with Mike (and Jason?). It`s not particularly awesome in any way, it just has some nice peeling red and white paint, and a cool Coke fridge.
Solid Rock Hotel 1. Exterior	Solid Rock Hotel 2. Interior

The Gan Kutsu Cliff Face Hotel in Saitama is the relic of a dream, one man’s vision to carve out a massive hotel in the sheer rock face, working alone with only a chisel for 21 years until the day he died in 1925.	Takahashi Minekichi was a rural Japanese strawberry farmer with a vision. For 21 years he carved the beginnings of a grand hotel into the solid rock wall of a cliff face on his land, digging out the contours only he could see.
Jeju Resorts 1. Saurabol	Baba’s Old Curiosity Shop

The Saurabol resort hotel was never completed, abandoned 10 years ago when construction funds ran dry.	The old curiosity shop in Takadanobaba has been a mystery to me for a long time. I first spotted it passively years ago, before I lived near here, most likely on a trip to the Blue Parrot second-hand book store.

Fuchu US Air Force Base	Tachikawa US Air Force Base

The abandoned US Air Force (USAF) base in Fuchu is a vine-slathered memento from the early days of Japanese/American peace. Its huge twin parabolic dishes are still visible from the exterior- though now half-eaten up by the passing decades, rusted red and bobbing like hole-riddled yachts on the sea of green jungle.	The abandoned US Air Force (USAF) base in Tachikawa is a bramble-choked memento from the early days of Japanese/American peace. Its three huge chimneys are still visible from the exterior, brick-red and lined up like masts on a rudderless ship, slowly sinking deeper into the smothering sea of green jungle.

Camp Drake US Air/Army Base

Camp Drake was a joint US Army/Air Force base in Saitama, active until the 1970`s. It contained a hospital which handled troops coming out of Vietnam and also a communications array.

Kawaminami POW Shipyard	Hiroshima A-bomb Dome

The Kawaminami shipyard was opened in 1936 and went bankrupt in 1955. Through the war years it served as both a munitions factory, a drydock for construction of cargo ships, escort ships, and kaitens, and possibly also as a POW slave labor camp	At 8:15 on August 6 1945 the first nuclear bomb in the history of warfare detonated over Hiroshima, obliterating the city within a 1.5 mile radius and killing outright some 80,000 people, with around another 70,000 dying of radiation and burns by the end of the year.

Nakagin Capsule Hotel	The New Sky Building

The Nakagin Capsule Hotel Tower in Shimbashi was the first of its kind in the world; a wholly modular building comprised of a concrete stack with latch-points for pre-fabricated one-piece rooms to bolt on to.	The New Sky Building in Shinjuku belongs to the stable of architecture known as Metabolism, a 1970′s movement in Japan to create utilitarian, utopian, bolt-on and off structures that can change and evolve as needed.

Abandoned Ceramic land theme park	Ruin of a kaiten suicide boat base

Ceramic Land is one of Japan`s grand failed theme parks, though one more resilient than its compadres. Located in a Kyushu town famous for its flowery gardens, it is still barely clinging to a tenuous thread of life.	Towards the end of World War 2 the Japanese military created and employed the `kaiten`, a manned suicide torpedo designed to blow up American ships with great accuracy.
Kyu Nagasaki Prison	Seoul`s ruined Jumbo Jet

Kyu Nagasaki Prison was built in 1907, one of five `ultra-modern` Meiji-era prisons built throughout Japan. Its Victorian design is attributable to a research mission to study European prisons conducted by the Meiji government. Within its five meter-high red brick wall, a five-pointed prison block held up to 800 high-security prisoners.	Juan T. Trippe was one of the leading aeronautical pioneers of his time, a Howard Hughes figure who first dreamt up the idea of the Jumbo Jet, and founded the company Pan American Airlines, which in the 30′s and 40′s was the biggest airline company in the world. This plane was only named after him in 1975, 5 years it was first built and 6 years before Trippe himself died.

Asama Volcano Museum 1. First	Asama Volcano Museum 2. History

Up in the mountainous north-west corner of snowy Gunma prefecture, at the foot of the once-active volcano Mt. Asama, lies a beautifully weathered abandoned volcano museum. Ruptured by avalanche scree and scoured by the harsh winter winds rushing down the valley, it stands as a lone sentinel guarding the jagged granite slopes leading up to the volcano’s cone.	The Mt. Asama Volcano Museum was a mould-breaking facility opened in 1967, offering insight into the life-cycle of the most active volcano in Honshu, and into the area of volcanic rock surrounding it known as Oni Oshi Dashi. Its opening ceremony was attended by then-Crown Prince Akihito and his young wife Crown Princess Michiko.

Asama Volcano Museum 3. HDR	Asama Volcano Museum 4. Wedding
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This was my second time to go to the Asama Volcano Museum. The first was on my first haikyo road trip back in 2007- back when I was packing only a cameraphone to shoot with and cared far more about the explore than I did about the photography.	Dom and Liduina dress up in their wedding clothes and show us how to really shoot a haikyo. And Edmund wears an anime mask. My first haikyo model-shoot, and an excellent experience in all.

Bones of a Gunma Ski Lift	Chutes and Ladders in a Cement Plant

The Gunma ski lift was the glace cherry on a sumptuous cake of weekend haikyo. We’d headed up into the northernmost quadrant of Gunma seeking a mine/factory. The mine itself turned out to be not all I’d hoped for, mostly demolished and overgrown, but the ski lift and adjoining recently abandoned ski resort were a wonderful consolation prize.	It was the third time for me to set out in search of the Hume factory. The first time was on our inaugural haikyo road trip, the second time was solo. This time it was first on our list, and stood no chance of escaping exploration.

The White Root mine.	Abandoned castle on a Gunma hill

The White Root mine is old, so old that only the faintest outlines of its bones remain. Squint hard and you might see fragments of its ribcage scattered over the hillside, parts of a cracked skull just visible through the topsoil.	Japan is riddled with shrines, both in cities and out in the countryside, huddled in the basin of wintry valleys or perched precariously on top of mountains- often at points of raw natural beauty and power. From time to time though these wooden complexes go bankrupt.

Peaceful haikyo of a Gunma Motor Lodge	Tokyo’s lonesome haikyo bridge

I don’t know anything about this haikyo- no history, no past claims to glory or modern haunting. Like the Sun Hills Hotel Car Park before it it’s just a place with some beautiful shapes, light, and decay. Nobody goes there, though access is easy.	Months ago now I ventured out on a slow work day to meet fellow haikyoist and photographer Adrian Tan. He suggested going to shoot a haikyo bridge, and my curiosity was definitely piqued.

Keishin Hospital 1. First Visit	Keishin Hospital 2. HDR

The gutted shell of the abandoned Keishin Hospital stands blank and ghostly on the rural Kanagawa sky-line. It once housed state-of-the-art radiology and cancer departments, now the only pieces of equipment remaining are the chairs bolted to the floor in the dentist’s office.	Keishin Hospital was once a pre-eminent site of super high-tech radiology equipment, leading the charge as Japan raced into the modern era. Some 2o years ago that dream fell by the way-side though, and the place was left to the vandals. They tore out everything that could be torn out, leaving only a few metal fixtures too heavily stapled down.

Keishin Hospital 3. Graffiti	Keishin Hospital 4. Model

Often ruins have a few tags littering their walls, messages and names left by some dumb-asses in their bid for eternal glory. Scrawls, defacements, junk. Well, not so the Kesihin hospital. It is a gallery of gorgeous, skilled, vivid art that Banksy would be proud of.	After the grand luck of Dom and Liduina contacting me for a wedding haikyo shoot a few months back, I figured I couldn`t bank on the same thing happening again. If I wanted to shoot models in haikyo more, I`d have to get out there and find them myself.

Toyo Bowl 1. First	Toyo Bowl 2. HDR

The Toyo Bowl in Kanagawa was a mammoth venture when first dreamed up, the second biggest bowling alley in the world behind the Nagoya Toyo Bowl, featuring 108 bowling lanes spread over 3 huge floors, along with a large pachinko hall, restaurants, gift shops, arcades, and a creche.	The Kanagawa Toyo Bowl was one of several 1980′s alleys built during Japan’s bowling ‘boom’, coinciding with the years of the economic Bubble. When the Bubble collapsed in the early ’90′s so began the end of the bowling boom, and all of the Toyo alleys across the country eventually went into receivership.

The forgotten Okawa seminar house	The lonely ore-cart of Seigoshi Mine

We took the coast route around the hill, trying to find a road that would lead us to the Seminar House Paul had seen from the train. At the top we rolled around wealthy summer homes for 20 or so minutes, peering over the edge, constantly wondering if we were too high, too low, too far round. We got out to walk. “Look, it’s a deer.”	Seigoshi mine hides its secrets well. Fronted by a live builder’s yard, shielded by a fence with a live antenna inside, overgrown, ramshackle, and falling down- if you can plough through all of that you get to the good stuff- lonely mine carts, ancient bottles of whiskey, LOST-like hatches complete with beeping machinery, and store rooms filled with boxes of TNT.

Tohoku Ghost Towns 1. Matsuo	Tohoku Ghost Towns 2. Taro

Matsuo mine in the north of Japan opened in 1914 and closed in 1969. In its heyday it was the biggest mine for sulfur in the Eastern world. It had a workforce of 4,000 and a wider population of 15,000, all of whom were accomodated in a make-shift city in the mountains of Hachimantai park. The city was known as the ‘paradise above the clouds’.	The derelict Taro mine lies at a generational crossing point- once a place where raw sulfides were dug from the earth, now it functions as a cosmic ray laboratory for a nearby University, capturing electrons from outer space in several large heavily wired pools. It was the first of four mines on our Iwate shopping list, ranked number 3 in all of East Japan.

Tohoku Ghost Towns 3. Kamaishi	Tohoku Ghost Towns 4. Osarizawa

Kamaishi Mine is ranked as the second best haikyo (ruin) in all of east Japan, according to one of the haikyo books I follow. Iron has been mined there since 1727, and Japan’s first blast furnace was built there in 1857. Production peaked in the 1970′s, with more than a million tons of ore coming out a year.	Mining of gold and copper at the legendary Osarizawa mine began around 1380 years ago, with the last of the smelting facilities closing down in 1978. Now the site is owned by Mitsubishi, who run guided tours around the highlights and a museum for 1,000 yen- a tour we almost got chain-ganged into joining.

Okawa Grand Hotel	Small Pox Isolation Ward

The Okawa Grand Hotel in Izu was remarkable for the perfectly clean, skimmed and filtered swimming pool set between its two tropically ruined buildings. Shut down for at least twenty years but still plastered with signs to rent or sell, the owners clearly still have high hopes for it. In every room you can hear the lapping of the sea on the rocky beach. As we left, a gang of kids moved in to use the pool.	Small Pox was once an incurable killer, claiming around 380 million deaths in the first half of the 20th century before its eradication. The people who contracted it were likely to die, and had to be removed from the general population lest they spread the infection to others. The Small Pox Isolation Ward Haikyo set into a then-remote Izu cliff-side was one such place they’d be banished to.

Heian Wedding Hall	Akeno Gekijo Strip Club

The ruined Heian Wedding Hall in Ibaraki prefecture was a far cry from the Akeno Gekijo Strip Club that preceded it. Here was a wholly wholesome building, built for the profession and binding of love’s vows, decorated in the most tasteful manner with Adam and Eve mounted on winged steeds in stained-glass friezes.	The Akeno Gekijo haikyo is something of an oddity in Japan, as the only actual strip club I’ve seen here. Of course there are similar venues; hostess bars, soaplands, love hotels, but they each cater to a slightly different crowd and provide a slightly different flavor of tawdry service. To find a straight-up strip club complete with central podium, viewing seats, and dancing poles seems a feat beyond expectation.