Abandoned Kansai

Takarazuka is one of those bedroom towns at the foot of the Rokko Mountains, home to thousands of commuters working in Kobe and Osaka. Like Nishinomiya and Ashiya (both to the south) Takarazuka is a rich suburb. While Nishinomiya is famous for sake and the Hanshin Tigers in all of Japan till this very day, Takarazuka’s brightest days are in the past – although it’s still a beautiful place to live and attracts hordes of tourists every weekend. The days of Hanshinkan Modernism, which made Takarazuka one of THE places to be in the early 20th century, may be long gone, but a few parts of this cultural heyday survived for almost a century. Prime example being the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater troupe, founded in 1913 by the president of Hankyu Railways to attract more people to come to Takarazuka and its hot springs – and of course to sell train tickets… 99 years later the revue is popular as always with ticket prices up to 11.000 Yen. While the hot springs are outshined by the nearby Arima Onsen town Takarazuka gained a new attraction in 1994 when the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum (Takarazuka’s Tezuka Osamu Memorial Hall) opened its door. This three floor museum is dedicated to Osamu Tezuka (who would have thought it?), the godfather of anime, father of manga, Japan’s Walt Disney – and creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion (still in development hell at Nintendo?) and Black Jack. Oh, and of course there are dozens of hiking trails in the mountains to Takarazuka’s west and north!

Being one modern and tidy city Takarazuka is way less famous for abandoned places. I’ve actually never seen one on any of the Japanese haikyo blogs. The more surprised I was when I spotted some rusty machinery on my way back from a hiking trip a couple of years ago, long before I started urban exploration as a hobby. So when I remembered the rusty gold a few months ago I saved it for one of those “I wanna explore an abandoned place, but I don’t wanna get up at 6 a.m. to ride several trains for 3 or 4 hours” days. In February of 2012 I finally went back to Takarazuka again – after lunch, because I could!

When I was exploring the Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant I wasn’t sure what the place was exactly. Judging by the look of the surroundings and the machinery left behind I guessed it was another limestone mine, an industry almost omnipresent in Japanese countryside – just without the chemical plant the *White Stone Mine* had. A stone crusher was also missing, which is kind of ironic in retrospect given the fact that the kanji for macadam are the same as the ones used in the Japanese term for “crushing stones”. So basically all I found were a couple of loading bays (probably with sorting devices to separate small stones from bigger ones) and conveyor belts; plus controls for the machinery. Some installed within wooden huts in dangerously desolate state, some in wooden boxes just nailed and bolted to concrete walls; I guess waterproof wasn’t invented back then…

Exploring the area was especially exciting since I’ve never seen the place anywhere on the internet before – and it was dangerous! Every step forward, every corner revealed more unsound wood and brittle metal. I guess somebody lived for a while in one of the shacks and left behind, among other things, a suitcase full of porn. Yes, not just a couple of magazines – a whole suitcase full of the censored Japanese school girl porn that seems to be so common for abandoned places in this country… I guess you could call it the Porn Shack.

The other thing that really fascinated me was the already mentioned wooden box containing some of the controls for some of the machinery. Being located at the foot of a mountain range Takarazuka gets its share of rain, so I really wonder who thought it would be a good idea to nail a wooden control box to a concrete wall – and put a metal control panel right next to it. One can only imagine how much maintenance those things needed…

And finally a couple of words about the history of the place – stuff I found out after I explored the plant based on the information gathered there; and of course the internet was a big help… The whole rusty thing is / was owned by a company which could (should?) be translated as Osaka Macadam Industrial Place (大阪砕石工場, Osaka Saiseki), which is still a major player in the earthwork / crushed stone industry with 350 employees and several plants all over Japan. But my limestone assumption was wrong, hence the lack of a chemical plant. Osaka Saiseki was founded 1934 and the macadam plant in Takarazuka was opened in 1938. I assume the area I explored was the old separation and transportation line that was abandoned when the plant moved further into the valley to continue ripping some chunks out of the Rokko mountain range…