The Japanese Art School in the mountains of Okayama was one of those mysterious and legendary places I wanted to visit for years, but wasn’t able to find… and in the end I barely made it!
In spring of 2014 I was exploring the *White School* with my urbex buddy Rory when… Darn, I actually forgot the details of the story. We finished exploring the school and somehow we talked about the art school, though it wasn’t even on our schedule for the day. I think Rory’s wife, who helped me out finding the *Japanese Gold Cult*, pinned down the general area of the Japanese Art School the day before and we had to decide whether wanted to head to a mediocre *haikyo* I located exactly… or if we wanted to roll the dice and go for the unknown. So we headed north, deeper into the mountains. We knew that the school was near a very countryside train station (5 connections per day in each direction!), but that almost turned out to be a dead end. Rory tried to call his wife for more details while we spent about an hour or two on foot and by car looking for the art school. Running out of time we dared a most desperate move: We just stopped at a house near the train station and asked the people living there if they knew about the school. Not only did they in fact do, the lady of the house was even willing to escort us there! A kilometer can be near, but it also can be very, very far… especially when you have to turn half a dozen times and don’t know where.
The sun already started to set when we arrived at the school and I knew that time was of the essence. Access was surprisingly easy, though navigating was rather tough due to serious damage to the wooden floors. While I am still not 100% sure what the Japanese Art School really was, it turned out that at the end of its use it had been a private company – originally it was a local elementary school, closed in 1975. Japanese urbex blogs always portrayed it as an art school, but upon arrival (and based on what our lady guide told us) it was pretty clear that there was more to it. We entered through a massive hole in the wall and stumbled into some kind of warehouse I was never aware of. 40 years prior it must have been the main auditorium of the school, but now it was filled with boxes and crates full with all kinds of art supplies: colored pencils, oil colors, engraving knives, watercolors, little bottles and flasks and even models of pagodas and horses. Dozends, hundreds, thousands – depending on the item and its size. A lot more stuff than an art school could make use of in decades! One of the former class rooms was equipped with a heavy machine to help casting busts and masks, bolted to the wooden ground; the room next to it was a storage of those busts. The second main building was stuffed with all kinds of art equipment, too, including a room focusing on sewing. And one thing was pretty clear: There wasn’t enough space to house a full-blown art school, even if you would limit it to painting and sewing. The whole thing looked more like an art supplies company that manufactured busts and masks (some of which I had seen before at the amazing *Shizuoka Countryside School* and other places!) and probably offered hobby arts and craft lessons to the locals.
For a little under two hours I felt like a kid in a candy store… or a nerdy kid in an art supply store. There was so much to see, so much to discover! The auditorium alone would have deserved two hours, but I had to rush to see everything – I wouldn’t have had time to open boxes or drawers even if I would have wanted to. Interestingly enough this forced me to be creative with angles, focal lengths and exposure times. Overwhelming and challenging, the Japanese Art School was all I hoped for. And it left me yearning for more, which is one of the best things in life; having a great experience that makes you desperately wanting more… like a fantastic first date!
Sadly my heart was broken just half a year later, in September, before I was able to see the Japanese Art School again – it was cleaned out and most likely demolished…
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Amazing set! thanks for sharing.
Thanks for stopping by!
Photographing abandoned places is so neat! This is a great post with great photos!
Thanks a lot for your kind words! Plenty more to come… 🙂
The idea of using artifacts of an art school presents endless possibilities for original art. I like the photo of the horse figure, the best. But the others are nearly as haunting. The presence of classical mythological busts is surprising in the context of a Japanese location.
Yeah, though to me it was more surprising that those busts showed up at really remote schools…
The art school was an amazing place and it will be truly missed!
Wow! Some of these artifacts need to be in museums.
I’m not sure if they are that valuable… But it makes me wonder what happened to the museum at the abandoned *Yamaguchi New Zealand Village*. Word on the street is that the buildings were demolished – and that most likely includes the museum with the taxidermy horse.
Hello
I like coming here to see some urbex places from your contry
Thanks a lot – it’s always good to hear from regular readers… thanks for being one!
Hello
English isn’t my langage, i do my best and do certainely big mistakes 😀
Don‘t worry, English isn’t my first language either and I make mistakes all the time… but only practice makes us better! 🙂
Wow! No wonder you were like a kid in a candy store!!
Yeah, there was so much to see… Sadly I never had the opportunity to go back there for a second round of taking photos.
But you got some good ones from the first time, and a great experience …..
That’s for sure – it’s just sad to see the place gone, especially since it was one of about a dozen famous ones that were demolished this year in Japan alone…
very cool urbex shots.
Thanks a lot!