Haikyo

Abandoned buildings/haikyo come in all shapes and sizes as well as covering all manner of previous purposes; however, whilst a certain amount of melancholy is par for the course due to the memories, and to a certain extent the lost hope, left behind, the Higashi Izu-cho Isolation Ward is by far the most depressing place I have ever visited.

A predominantly wooden structure that, due to its location in a relatively dense bamboo forest, is rapidly decaying — the sanatorium’s brave battle with mother nature now very much a long lost cause.

Yet when the ward finally closed its dilapidated doors isn’t exactly clear, with anywhere up to the early 80s deemed possible, although magazines found in one of the rooms apparently suggest it may well have peaked in the mid 60s.

But regardless of the dates, the ward’s remaining straw mattress beds,

along with the antiquated and now damaged fittings,

paint an especially bleak picture.

One in which sick and presumably dying patients — smallpox being the most likely cause — lived out whatever time they had amidst the most basic of facilities.

Somehow dealing with the no doubt dank and dreary conditions.

And all the time resting on those aforementioned,

and absolutely horrible looking,

beds.

In the last couple of years I’ve explored numerous abandoned buildings/haikyo, ranging from museums to mining towns, but for one reason or another, never any war-related sites — a situation I finally managed to rectify last week with a trip to Nagasaki and the Kawatana Japanese Navy Torpedo Boat Training School.

Many of those enlisted for the far more widely known of Japan’s special attack units, the Kamikaze, were taught at the relatively nearby Tachiarai Air Base, but at Kawatana, the less well known but no less deadly Shinyo (suicide boats) and Kaiten (explosives-laden submarines) personnel underwent their specialized training. Along with the even more desperate, although in the end little used, bomb carrying Fukuryu divers. All of it needless to say in preparation for the young conscripts one and only mission.

Now, however, after more than sixty years of standing untouched and exposed to the elements, the various lonely looking structures are slowly beginning to crumble.

And despite the fact that the base would have been a very different place during the last couple of years of World War II, with thousands of men, many as young as 15, passing through in the process of making the ultimate sacrifice, nowadays there is only silence.

Plus, perhaps surprisingly, a certain sense of peacefulness.

And added to this, the visit for me personally was especially poignant as I was taken there by a colleague whose father trained at Kawatana as a two-man suicide boat captain; a recruit who was luckily saved from performing his duty by Japan’s surrender after the devastation at nearby Nagasaki. A decision that, had it come a few weeks later, would have meant that his son wouldn’t have existed, and I’d have been standing there alone.

Just like the buildings do now, except for the occasional company of local fishermen.

After looking at some personal effects and the rooms in parts one and two respectively, it’s finally time to see the facilities; areas of the small huddle of mining company-related houses which, despite being abandoned a couple of decades or so ago, are still surprisingly well equipped.

And whilst at least one resident appears to have left in a relative rush,

others were decidedly more deliberate.

Not of course that clean dishes would make cooking dinner any less disagreeable.

Meaning it’d be about as tempting as using the toilet. A water closet complete with twenty-year-old used paper for added uncomfortableness.

A feeling of filth and fetidness that no amount of cleaning,

could ever cleanse.

For anybody interested in more haikyo/urban exploration, there are also pictures on Tokyo Times of entirely abandoned mining towns, water parks and also love hotels, along with a whole gamut of other stuff in the haikyo category.

After a look in part one at the insides of some abandoned miner’s houses, along with the possessions left behind by the people who once lived there, the buildings themselves vary from the relatively grand, at least gate-wise,

to the rather more ramshackle.

With such tell-tale signs of age particularly apparent when it comes to technology.

Not that such hints are really needed of course, as the decidedly dilapidated state of the domiciles clearly indicate that they are well past their prime.

Especially so when the long-closed curtains are carefully prised opened, revealing at least one room that hasn’t been touched for a terrifically long time.

And yet at the same time rather bizarrely looks like it could have been lived in until not long ago.

Something that certainly can’t be said about the futon, which is not only rancid, but covered in rodent faeces.

Not unlike the kitchen, which we’ll have a nosey at next time

Yet regardless of all the rubbish, there’d be no point in trying to call somebody to make a complaint, as the connection has long since been cut.

In the third and final part, I take a look at the decidedly forlorn facilities, including the aforementioned kitchen, and a not exactly comfortable commode. All of which can be seen here.