Beauty In Decay

Was reading on Metropolis about haikyo, abandoned places in Japan that attract a certain type of tourist. According to the site, the term originally referred to the bombed-out buildings left after WWII, but today the term is applied to any abandoned building or place. And, it would seem, there are quite a lot of them in Japan.

This is surprising to me, as indeed it must be to a lot of those outside Japan.

Photographs of a Japan in decay shock foreign audiences because they don’t fit with the standard Tokyo-vs.-Kyoto image of the country. And, apparently, these pictures of ruins don’t look like Japan to Japanese photographers themselves, who say that the sites give them the feeling of being in a foreign country. Kobayashi even uses the loan word gosto taun to describe the atmosphere.

Japan is thought of as a place where real estate is at a premium, where any and all space is occupied, exploited. But in a country where the majority of its population is packed in urban areas, and what population there is is shrinking due to a low birth rate, the existence of haikyo suddenly doesn't seem so surprising.

Photographers have taken to capturing haikyo and releasing the images in books, which has caused something of a haikyo tourist boom. It is just the kind of thing I would be into. Abandoned places have a certain strange energy to them, a sadness that speaks of unrealized dreams and lost time.

Photographer Hiroyuki Tsuzuki has tons of photos of haikyo on his website, Haikyo Deflation Spiral. Amazing stuff. The photos of the abandoned amusement parks are especially poignant.