Abandoned Kansai

I’ve been to some amazing abandoned / closed schools over the years, one or two so spectacular and utterly beautiful they deserve to be preserved as museums – this isn’t one of them. But whenever I post a location in good condition, somebody leaves a comment (usually on *Youtube*, i.e. without reading the article) about how in other countries the building would have been smashed to pieces and how Japanese people are above vandalism – which isn’t true. There are just less urbexers in Japan, explorers tend to be even more secretive about locations (including a strict hierarchy I luckily don’t have anything to do with as an outsider), and with inner city real estate being so expensive, most untouched abandoned places are actually rather remote; good for some (no bored youth around!), bad for others (nobody hears vandals when they destroy places). And of course I rather explore places I expect to look beautiful than stopping at every pile of trash that is rotting at the side of the road – as a result the percentage of interesting places I explore is much higher than the percentage of actually interesting abandoned places in Japan. So before I showcase the next gorgeous school, you have to suffer with me through this one… 🙂

The Japanese School Beyond Repair I found next to a small hamlet (now abandoned) and several kilometers away from the next village, and it is just *another victim* of Japan’s post-WW2 energy policy on the Kii Peninsula. Back then the government decided to staunch several rivers with dams to install large-sized modern water power plants. The construction of the Sakamoto Dam began in 1957, from 1962 on the water level behind it was raised – destroying a remote village’s old school (founded in 1890!), so the new ferro-concrete building was constructed in 1964 as compensation. They even made it a combined elementary and junior high school, but since more and more families moved away, the school had a student body of five. Yes, it was so low, I had to write out the number! Five… in total – the school had more rooms than pupils! I guess it’s no surprise that classes were suspended in 1969, though the school wasn’t officially closed (and therefore maintained) till 1998.

Now nobody lives in the area anymore within a distance of about 20 kilometers, leaving the school defenseless to vandals – and it shows. Pretty much everything that can be broken has been broken. Windows, doors, furniture, a piano; everything! Some idiots even destroyed the parquet flooring in the big room on the upper story. And of course there are graffiti all over the place. Not nice murals you can sometimes find at other abandoned places, just some more or less random scribble. It also didn’t help that a mudslide or two rushed through the ground level of the school, probably after people with not enough parenting, but too much energy ripped apart windows and doors.
The school actually looked quite interesting at first sight from the outside, but the interior was just one big mess with the worst from both worlds, vandalism and natural decay. This probably is what abandoned schools should look like, but personally I prefer the nice looking ones with tons of items left behind – like the *Landslide School* I explored with the same people (Ruth, Chelsey and Ben) on the next day.

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