Abandoned Kansai

When you think you’ve seen it all you start to have a closer look at things that have been under your nose for years – and then you’ll find places like an abandoned pig auction market!

Desperation is barely ever a good advisor, but after exploring Kansai (and the rest of Japan) for eight years, I am kind of running out of places to explore within reasonable range. Well, at least places I am interested in – locations that are virtually inaccessible, mostly collapsed, or completely moldy are not exactly luring me out of bed early on a Saturday morning. A couple of months ago I was planning another day trip with my buddy Mark and I finally added a location I’ve been skipping for years – because it was small, because it was located along a very, very busy street, because there were no other even remotely interesting places around; and let’s be honest, how interesting could a pig auction market be?
Well, surprisingly interesting actually! Since I had low to no expectations, the Pig Auction Market was a very positive surprise. Yes, it was located along a busy road between a car dealership and a trucking company, but the only building on the premises was at the far end of the lot, separated from a rice field only by a small road with basically zero traffic. From the bird’s eye perspective the small complex must look like a large grey Pac Man eating the auction building – Pac Man, of course, being the roofed outdoor pen. Back in the day, trucks apparently were able to drive up directly to the stalls to unload the pigs – and on the other end of the metal cage stable was a small railroad to drive the poor creatures directly into the building, where people bid on them. To my total surprise the auction building was accessible, too. Mostly empty, nevertheless extremely interesting as Japanese pig auctions are something I never wasted a single thought on in my whole life, but I had the feeling that I learned a lot about them just by having a look around at the Pig Auction Market, which included a small private area, so somebody probably lived there for a while, at least temporarily. (The place was established in 1969 by the ZEN-NOH (National Federation of Agricultural Co-operative Associations), part of the omnipresent Japan Agricultural Cooperatives or JA, as a shoat market. In 1974 it was bought by the prefectural government and lent to the local pig keeping society – they used it till the market was finally closed in 2005. After years of abandonment the next door car dealership started to use the premises as a parking lot, though I don’t know whether or not they own the place now – all I know is that it didn’t help taking pictures outside as there were used cars all over the place…)

I knew about the Pig Auction Market for at least five or six years until I finally explored it in early July, on the last bearable weekend of yet another horrible Kansai summer. Despite dripping with sweat (inside) and being eaten alive by mosquitos (outside) it was great to explore this location – looking at the different elements and piecing together how the place could have worked 20, 30, 40 years ago… it felt like a true exploration with unusual motifs everywhere. When I planned the the trip out there I scheduled about an hour at the Pig Auction Market, but in the end I took pictures for pretty much exactly 2.5 hours – because I really, really liked that place. The whole thing actually reminded me a bit of the still Abandoned Kansai exclusive abandoned *Poultry Farm* that I explored in early 2012…

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