Golf is one of the most popular sports in Japan – there are country clubs everywhere, often several next to each other, but after a century of growth their number seems to be rapidly shrinking recently… yet only a few of them end up abandoned!
A group of British expats established golf less than 120 years ago in Japan by founding the country’s first club in Kobe in 1903. Ten years later the Tokyo Golf Club was opened by and for native Japanese, who learned about golf on their trips to the United States. The sport grew very slowly in the following decades – to 7 in 1924, when the Japan Golf Association was founded, to 23 in 1941, when Japan attacked the United States, and to 72 in 1956. In 1957 Torakichi Nakamura and Koichi Ono won the World Cup of Golf, held in Japan that year for the first time – and BOOM!, golf started to become a huge success: 195 courses in 1960, 424 in 1964, more than 1000 in the early 70s and more than 2400 courses in 2009.
Over the past decade thought the number went down to about 2300 courses, rather less – market saturation was probably finally reached, and it surely doesn’t help that Japan’s population is shrinking. Some facilities most likely got too old, but since country clubs / golf courses tend to be quite pricey, I guess most of them closed because they just didn’t make money anymore; the main reason why businesses close… Though there is indeed another factor specific to golf courses that make owners reconsider their business plans: alternative energy sources. Over the past decade, solar panels dramatically dropped in price, and despite Japan’s plans to cling to nuclear energy, the amount of solar parks all over the country skyrocketed since the Fukushima Disaster in 2011 – and closed golf courses are perfect for solar parks: Get rid of the club house and a few sheds (or keep them as utility buildings!), fill up the sand traps and remove some trees and shrubs… and you get a large flat area on even ground or a gentle slope. Good examples for completely converted country clubs are here: 34.958362, 135.852641 and 34.950899, 135.795164 – and those two former golf courses are less than five kilometers / three miles away from each other! (Unfortunately they have been transformed before I realized it, so it would be pointless to go there…) The problem from an urbex point of view is that it takes a couple of years to give a closed golf course an abandoned look. I checked out several recently closed ones in the past year and they all were either still maintained or looked like they were – pointless to take photos there. But now that turning them into solar parks has become popular, it’s really tough to find the right timing to check out those closed country clubs in Japan. If you are too early, there is nothing interesting to see… if you are too late, you are standing in front of the highly secured gate of a solar park. Luckily I was already able to explore two or three really good abandoned country clubs / driving ranges (like the gorgeous *Japanese Driving Range*, another original find you’ll probably never see anywhere else other than on Abandoned Kansai), some of them yet unpublished – unfortunately the Solar Park Golf Club wasn’t one of them.
Nevertheless the Solar Park Golf Club was quite an unusual location, because the former club house was still standing there accessible on top of a mountain, offering a good view at most of the transformed golf course – usually the view you get is horizontal and through a barbed-wired fence. Yes, I was too late, but nevertheless I was able to take some unusual photos… which this blog is all about.
The Solar Park Golf Club was established in 1973 and closed something like 40 years later. On the latest satellite view of GoogleMaps you can see that the earthworks of the transformation have already begun, but the solar panels haven’t been set up yet – which leads me to believe that the satellite view of that area must be about two or three years old now. (Just in case you wonder: GoogleMaps doesn’t use current satellite images for the most part – I’ve seen areas that must be about six years old now. StreetView often is more current than the satellite view…) Overall it was a very relaxed exploration – we drove up there, we took photos, we left. Nothing worth flying for to the other end of Japan for, but interesting enough to stop by when you are in the area…
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Thanks for sharing another neat find, Florian. I’ve noticed here in the U.S. that the satellite views are much newer – generally the same year, many times 6 months old or younger.
One small note, in the early part of your post, you might want to correct from United Stated to States. 😉
Keep it up! Great seeing a solar park (or “solar farm” as I know them here) with a top view that isn’t from a satellite. Most are the “through the fence” ones that you noted.
Cheers!
Yeah, I guess the US are a much more important market for Google than Japan. And big cities like Osaka and Tokyo are definitely updated more often than the remote countryside where I find my abandoned places…
Thanks a lot for pointing out the typo – I fixed it! Unfortunately I run on a very tight schedule recently, even had to skip some weeks in spring, so most articles I write just before I publish them – not a lot of time for re-writes, edits and spellchecking… It’s also one of the reasons why I don’t write about my favorite places recently, because I feel like they deserve articles that require more time. Well, I have a few days off soon, hopefully I’ll be able to spend a few afternoons putting some articles together I want to write for months now…
what a cool find –
Thanks a lot! 🙂
cool, what i find interesting is, the club house seems to be relatively far from the course itself, i know nothing about golf but from the previous post you made about this type of place, it kinda felt like the house is right at the course haha
The club house was basically above the golf course – I guess it would have taken maybe five minutes in a golf cart to the first hole… though I have to admit that I don’t know where exactly the first hole was. (And it also was a huuuuuge golf course, as far as the eye could see!)
oh yeah, this shows i know nothing about golf as i somehow didnt considered the existence of golf carts at all hahaha
Dude, I posted so many abandoned golf carts already. I thought you were a car guy… 😉
well yeah, but golf carts are slightly out of my spectrum hahaha
Nice view from the roof!