Abandoned Kansai

About two weeks ago I became uncle of twin boys – probably a good opportunity to finally write about the abandoned Maternity Hospital.

The Japanese countryside is littered with abandoned small clinics and hospitals. There must be hundreds of them all over the country, yet most of them are really hard to find, because unlike large modern hospitals the majority of the traditional small clinics look like regular big houses – countryside clinic or just a mansion? Often impossible to tell when passing by, even harder when trying to find locations like that via GoogleMaps. In my early urbex days eight years ago, people knew about maybe half a dozen of those clinics all over Japan – now the number is closer to half a dozen per prefecture, and yet some of them are very, very hard to find. In this case I was lucky and very grateful that some friends took me there…
The Maternity Hospital is a small clinic in a somewhat surprisingly touristy town in the middle of a quiet residential area, surrounded by houses with regular residents. Driving or even walking by you would never guess that it is abandoned and actually in rather bad condition already – the road facing side looks like a regular old building, but the back… the back suffered some serious damage. About a quarter of the house has already collapsed, and it’s pretty likely that the rest will follow rather sooner than later. Luckily most of the damage so far was done to the private section of the building, though the clinic part wasn’t in good condition either. The wooden floor of the lobby was either gone or in really bad shape, the former examination room was so cluttered I could barely position my tripod… or walk around the room without stepping on anything. Fortunately the signature item of the Maternity Hospital was still there – a half-size model of a pregnant Japanese woman with traditional hairdo. Between the examination room and the surgery room was a room that looked like a regular bedroom, but it once was probably used for patients to recover from the deeds that were done in the bright white room right next to it. The operating room was probably the brightest room I’ve ever been in, even on that overcast day of my visit. White tiles, white paint flaking off the walls and the ceiling, and even the surgical lighthead was mostly white – the weight of the latter already showing negative effects on the ceiling, most likely one day a contributing factor to bringing this part of the house down. Give it another two or three years and the Maternity Hospital probably will be gone. Like the next room, probably the former living room, where the ceiling and the roof were already gone.

Overall the Maternity Hospital was an interesting exploration. At first sight the whole thing looked like collapsed chaos, but once I figured out how to navigate around, I was able to find and capture at least some of the hidden beauty of this place. I wish I would have known about this hospital at the beginning of my urbex career, but at least I was able to have a look before further damage was done. A good location, still rather rare – but no *Tokushima Countryside Clinic*, my first and still favorite abandoned wooden hospital…

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