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Archive for the ‘NSFW’ Category

Non-Urbex: Maboroshi Hakurankai – The Weirdest Museum In Japan

Posted in Art, Asia, Japan, Museum, Non-Urbex, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Shizuoka, Travel on 2024/07/09| 7 Comments »

Japan has plenty of bizarre and quirky roadside attractions, but the Maboroshi Hakurankai, about 3 hours south of Tokyo, trumps them all.

The Izu Peninsula is famous for many things. Shimoda and the Black Ships. Kawazu and the first cherry blossoms of the year. The gorgeous train ride along the coast. Wasabi. Onsen. Seafood. Spectacular views of Mount Fuji. The Izu Peninsula has it all! And more…
One of the most underrated tourist attraction in all of Japan, at least among foreign visitors, is the Maboroshi Hakurankai, literally the “phantom exhibition” – an eclectic collection of real(ly) old items and bizarre art at the former site of a botanical garden called Izu Green Park along Route 135. The latter was sold in February 2011 to new owner Sailor-chan, who has become somewhat of a social media star due to their… unconventional outfits and photo sessions with visitors at the entrance. After three months of demolition and renovation the museum opened on July 16th 2011. The creepy-cute concept was fed by 100 truckloads of exhibits – some from its sister museum called Ayashi Shonen Shojo Hakubutsukan (“The Weird Museum for Boys and Girls”) just 3.5 kilometers down the road, other items came from many years of collecting, including auctions, antique stores, closed museums like a house of hidden treasures (a euphemism for the 70s sex museums Japan had in a lot of onsen towns) and a film museum. As of 2021 the Maboroshi Hakurankai displayed more than 20000 exhibits across several buildings and outdoors – pretty much everything from newspapers to books to toys to arcade machines to vehicles to uniforms to mannequins (with different levels of clothing) to more or less bizarre art; most of the exhibits are from the Showa Era (1926-1989), which currently has a revival in Japan nicknamed Showa Mania.

According to the Japanese Wikipedia page about the museum “many of the objects are traumatizing to children, and some local parents discipline their kids by telling them, “If you do anything bad, we will take you to Maboroshi” – which made the museum just the more interesting to me. (I studied Japanese History at university, focusing on social and technological history.) I finally had the opportunity to visit the Phantom Exhibition just before the pandemic and it was all that I expected… and much, much more! Usually I schedule between 15 and 60 minutes for a museum visit, this one I had to leave after more than two hours to catch a bus back home – and I hope I will be able to come back one day as parts of my time there felt a bit rushed. The large parking lot was disappointingly empty, maybe half a dozen cars, but I guess toward the end of a long weekend most Tokyoites and other visitors were already on their way home. Sailor-chan wasn’t there to greet me, so I made my way up a winding slope, past the first exhibits, to the entrance with a small pay booth (1200 Yen back then, 1400 Yen now). The first exhibition hall was one of the old gigantic greenhouses that now included a 12-meter-tall head with shoulders. No air-conditioning, so pleasantly warm in January, but probably barely bearable in summer. When I entered, a guy pushing a sex doll in a wheelchair just left and I thought “Oh, they must be redecorating!” – later that afternoon it turned out that the bloke wasn’t an employee and that the doll was his “girlfriend”. So, yeah, not just the owner and the exhibits at the Maboroshi Hakurankai are eccentric, some of the visitors are, too. From the greenhouse I went back to the main area, which turned out to be a maze of paths and buildings while you are slowly ascending an Izu peninsula hill. Even four and a half years later I am still unable to properly describe the things I’ve seen… and how this place wouldn’t survive a week in any other country as its exhibits have such a great variety that they probably offend 90% of people at one point or another for being too liberal (all the sex stuff…) or for being too conservative (plenty of WW2 memorabilia…) – or for being just too bizarre, like the sculptures from artists that were placed near the top. But not only the owner, the exhibits, and the visits were unusual, so was the presentation of everything. Some areas looked like a proper museum, others felt like people just dumped stuff. Not even by topic, just piles or collages of things – a surprising amount of it outdoors, exposed to nature. Which makes the whole place something like a piece of partly decomposing art that is composed of an ever-changing collection of art and discard.

If I would have to describe the Maboroshi Hakurankai in one word, it would be “mind-blowing”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bizarre and sometimes deeply disturbing place, parts are just random piles of stuff, some areas are narrow and dirty… and yet there is so much to look at. Things you have never seen before and will never see again. Things from your childhood that you have long forgotten about and never expected to see again. I’m not an artsy kind of person and my historian heart was bleeding half the time over how a lot of the exhibits were presented – but if you go with an open mind and accept the place for what it is, I’m sure that you will have an amazing time there. Just schedule at least three hours for your visit… and make backup plans in case you hate it there and leave after 5 minutes.

And now I hope you will enjoy the gallery, but please be aware that some of the photos are definitely not safe for work. Some of them are probably not safe for sane minds. But it’s also art and I think it should be presented uncensored. Just be aware that you are looking at the stuff at your own discretion. To give you a general idea: If you had no problem with my explorations of the *abandoned sex museums*, you should be fine with this photo series, too!

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Fashion Hotel Love

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Japan, Love Hotel, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Travel, Urbex on 2017/12/19| 3 Comments »

Merry XXX-Mas, everyone! Hoe, hoe, hoe… Another year has gone by, but before we are going to have a look back next week, we’ll go down again to the seedy parts of Japan and explore an especially dirty and kinky abandoned love hotel! (The following paragraphs of this article use rather strong language with terminology of sexual nature; some photos in the gallery at the end show pictures of adult toys. If you are not comfortable with that, you might want to skip this article and come back for a new one next week – oh, and this whole article is definitely not safe for work!)

One of the few not so flattering images a lot of foreigners have about Japan is that the country is very kinky and full of sexual deviants – rapey pixel porn, used underwear vending machines, love hotels with Hello Kitty SM rooms, lots of sexual depictions involving underage girls and / or tentacles. And much like the positive stereotypes, this… unusual one… is not exactly reflecting reality. While most porn is indeed both pixelated and pixilated, and apparently a lot of Japanese men are so “hands on” that pretty much every train line has women only cars to treat that symptom of the omnipresent sexism, the parts about tentacles, underwear vending machines and kinky hotel rooms are vastly exaggerated – over the years I’ve seen my share of abandoned love hotels, yet it took me almost eight years to finally find a kinky one. And believe me, I was looking for one! Hard! Just for the love of urbex, of course… 🙂
The Fashion Hotel Love (or was it Love Hotel Fashion? Or maybe something completely different? Who knows…) was a rather small amusement hotel in the countryside. A place easy to overlook, despite the decaying sign in front of the orange pieces of construction fence so typical for Japan. Wedged between two active businesses, access turned out to be surprisingly tricky. Luckily there was little to nothing to worry about once inside, and it didn’t take long to find the Saint Andrew’s Cross with the handcuffs hanging from it. Most love hotel rooms are just glorified hotel rooms with a karaoke machine or a video game system, some feature a whirlpool or a shower you can see from the bed… and there are menus for both food and adult toys. Rooms with kinky equipment or luxury interior like a sauna or a real mini pool are rather unusual – so this was a rare find, an abandoned kinky love hotel! Sadly the room in question was pretty dark, partly because the bed area had been the victim of arson, which lead to the discontinuation of business in 2009. Considering eight years of abandonment the hotel was still in pretty good condition, though there were definitely signs of vandalism and more cases of arson – a total of three rooms were partly or completely burned out, fortunately the hotel was a surprisingly solid structure, so nothing to worry about when moving around. And there was plenty to see! The arson rooms, a lockable wooden cage, a second room with a saltire, various sex chairs, nature reclaiming another room, a still intact “fun sized” condom dispenser, various signs…

I had high hopes for the Love Hotel Fashion and despite the constant rain it was a close to perfect exploration – I basically had to be dragged out of there after two hours as I could have easily spend another hour or two taking photos of all the little details. Some places you connect with in a positive way, others feel strange till the very end (like the *Japanese Strip Club*). But this, this was definitely one of my favorite exploration of 2017 – so Merry XXX-Mas, everyone!

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The Rape And Death Of An Abandoned Sex Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2015/08/18| 7 Comments »

The two deserted Japanese sex museums in *Yamaguchi* and *Hokkaido* were instantly amongst my favorite abandoned places of all time when I first visited them in 2012. They were rare, unique locations, virtually unknown at the time, tough to shoot – far from your run-of-the-mill abandoned hotel smartphone exploration. And while the one in Yamaguchi prefecture disappeared quietly sometime in early 2014, the one in Hokkaido went through quite a bit of suffering before it was finally demolished in January 2015.

*When I first visited the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures in November 2012* it already showed some signs of vandalism – graffiti at the main entrance, two open doors, ransacked offices as well as a few pushed over exhibits and some stolen items. From the outside the museum looked rather eerie in 2012 – none of the windows were broken, but it had a really rundown look to it, nothing a person in their right mind would enter voluntarily. 😉
In spring of 2014, less than one and a half years later, I heard word that the Hokkaido Sex Museum was a total piece of trash and barely worth the visit – quite a bit of an exaggeration I thought. Sure, it wasn’t brand-new anymore when I had been there, but how much worse could it have become in less than 18 months? Since I was busy with my own spring explorations and the museum was about 1000 kilometers away from where I live, a revisit had to wait; but when I was able to get a rather cheap flight to Hokkaido for early November I took the chance and headed north. The museum was located in a mid-sized spa town called Jozankei Onsen and in walking distance of the famous and really amazing Hoheikyo Hot Spring, so I took a train from the airport to Sapporo and from there a bus to the countryside; a bus stop conveniently right in front of the “treasure house”. It was exciting to come back to this wonderful location I had so fond memories of, but even before I entered the “treasure house” or had a good look at the building, it became clear that my experience here this time would be quite different from the first visit. Two young women in their early 20s were standing next to their car parked right in front of the museum – one of them yelling something at a guy looking through a window of the upper floor, the yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant; a broken window, of course, as hardly any of the panes up there was still unharmed. Slightly shocked I headed over to the side entrance, where I found several of the animal exhibits lying outside on the ground, exposed to the weather. Why the heck would anybody do this? And yet this was just the beginning…
Inside, the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures looked even worse than from the outside. Windows and showcases were shattered, the several dozen once copulating animals were either gone (for example the tigers) or scattered all over the place – the few remaining standing ones were ripped apart, for example the moose in the second room. The further I walked, the more severe were the damages. The shooting game with the three ladies was severely damaged, the demon and the nude female doll from the Disney window stolen, the on glass painted dinosaurs with the huge manufactured dicks smashed. Sadly the lower floor didn’t look any better. The strip area was ripped apart, somebody apparently threw a cabinet on the woman in the cum shooting game, the huge mechanical penis near the wall under the stairs gone; even the religious statues in the next room were scattered, some probably stolen. The worst I felt for the stallion in the third room – no more hung like a horse… castrated; penis envy to the max!
I’ve been to quite a few trashed places before, and I’ve seen vandalism progressing, for example at the *Maya Tourist Hotel* and especially at *Nara Dreamland*, but this was a whole new level. The Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures (HHoHT) went from an amazing abandoned photo opportunity to a pile of trash in less than two years – a big building at the entrance of a busy spa town in a country with a reputation for little to no vandalism.

How could this happen?
Well, one of the reasons is probably GoogleMaps. As far as I know they previously removed the names of closed businesses, but then they started to keep the names and just added a CLOSED remark – and even allowed users to add names of places. So if you knew the Japanese name of the HHoHT, you could find it by looking for it on GoogleMaps.
Another factor most likely was the fact that the HHoHT was on the main road in a somewhat busy spa town with thousands of cars passing by every day, especially on the weekends. The building was obviously abandoned… and I am sure once somebody broke the first window of the restaurant floor, the whole place went to hell in a wheelbarrow.
To mention the owner of the museum as a final factor might be a bit unfair as nobody should be blamed when other people trash their property, but in a country where you can keep people from entering by putting up a string of dental floss, whoever was responsible for the building didn’t put up any “Do not enter!” signs and allowed to be both main entrances to be open (to both the museum and the restaurant) – not to mention an unlocked side-door basically out of sight of the main road. During my second visit there was even a third open door… but also a handwritten cardboard sign that theft, vandalism and even trespassing would be reported to the police. The placement of the sign? At the vandalized shooting game IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EXHIBITION! Darn, seriously? After entering and walking through half the building you tell people that they should not do that? If the owner would have put a traffic cone in front of each entrance the whole collection would probably still be in good condition.

Instead it took me two rather well-timed blocks of five minutes to film the revisit walkthrough in two parts as I ran into so many people inside the museum that it was close to impossible to do a one shot walking tour without having people yapping in the background; a total of three groups during my two hour long visit – all of them Japanese, none of them in a hurry. Despite new light sources due to the massive amount of vandalism (including the open door next to the cum shooting game on the lower floor) it was a rather slow process to take pictures at the museum, especially with people running through set-up shots every now and then.
Revisiting the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasure was one of the most heartbreaking urbex experiences ever. In 2012 I had such a great time there, exploring one of the few remaining examples of a dying Japanese subculture – in 2014 the museum was nothing but a vandalized waste of space. Not a fading reminder of a once glorious attraction, but a slap in the face of everybody being too late to see this wonderfully eclectic collection, compiled by a weird yet somewhat fascinating mind. Two month after my second visit, in January of 2015, the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasure was demolished. On *Google Maps you can still see the building*. But believe me, it’s gone. It’s probably for the better – and if you want to remember it in its 2012 glory, *have a look here*.

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Kinugawa Sex Museum in Nikko, Japan

Posted in Asia, Dark Tourism, Japan, Kanto, Map, Museum, Non-Urbex, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Tochigi, Travel, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2014/12/23| 6 Comments »

Sex museums in Japan are dying out. Once there were dozens of them all over Japan, now there are only two remaining: The Atami Sex Museum and the Kinugawa Sex Museum in Nikko; the latter one will close its doors for the last time in a week, December 31st 2014 at 5 p.m. JST, so let’s send it off with a farewell article!

In spring I went on a *road trip to Tohoku* with my buddies *Mike* and *Ben* – and on the way back we passed through Kinugawa Onsen, a small spa town in the mountains of Nikko, famous for the UNESCO World Heritage Toshogu Shrine, dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the historical model for James Clavell’s Lord Toranaga in his most famous novel, Shogun. Rather rundown, like so many onsen resorts these days, the town of the Angry Demon River offered a very special attraction, one of two remaining sex museums open for business in all of Japan. We were short on time, nevertheless we managed to squeeze in a one hour stop at this special location.
Opened in 1981, the museum focused on the depiction of the sexual culture in the Edo period a.k.a. Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Artful carvings, colorful paintings, beautiful shrines and several sex acts re-staged with dolls, for example the rape of noble women in a forest or a woman peeping on a couple having sex in an onsen. The last part of the museum was a bit more modern and included a blue movie theater with a tinge of green, a Marilyn Monroe doll on a red couch, several mannequins, a sex shop and a handful of those Ufo Catcher crane machines you might know from regular arcades – but instead of plush dolls you could win toys to make your girlfriend blush.
Usually it is not allowed to take photos or even videos in those sex museums, but I guess it was a combination of its certain demise and the fact that Michael had been there before for scientific reasons with one of his former professors – so we actually got permission to take Pictures and do a video tour. Given the extremely limited amount of time on our hands I filmed a walkthrough right away without having seen anything in advance, which was quite tricky due to countless mirrors and mirroring exhibition cases as well as the uncertainty of what would be ahead of me – luckily no other visitors, so I finished the virtual tour without any unjoyful incidents. Ten minutes later I was back at the entrance and started taking pictures with up to nerve-wrecking 30 seconds exposure time. After exploring two abandoned sex museums in *Yamaguchi* and *Hokkaido* it was extremely interesting so finally see one open for business and I really wish I would have had more time to enjoy the experience – but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do… and we had a rental car to return in Shinagawa, about three hours away without traffic jams, which were rather likely at the end of Golden Week.
Access to the museum was strictly forbidden to minors (you had to be 18 year or older!), given mostly the artful yet graphic depictions of genitals and sexual acts. Interestingly enough all movies and photos were censored with the pixilation Japan is famous for, yet most of the dolls were anatomically correct – so I had to censor one of the photos I took myself, just in case. The rest of them are graphic, too, but in an artistic and / or educational way that didn’t cause any problems with WordPress or YouTube when I wrote about the two abandoned sex museums… and I hope it will be the same this time, too (though YouTube already forced an age restriction on the video, requiring you to log into your Youtube account to watch the video). While not pornographic in nature, the following photos are not safe for work – and if you are easily offended by images like that, I recommend skipping the photo gallery this time, even when you read this article in the privacy of your home. I do not intend to offend anybody, but you can’t write an article about a sex museum without showing some of the exhibits… 🙂

Merry XXX-mas, everyone!

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Japanese Sex Museum Revisited

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2013/05/08| 10 Comments »

I visited the *Japanese Sex Museum* for the first time in March of 2012 – it was not only a very unique exploration, it was also a very long one, me spending about 4 hours in the pitch-black exhibition rooms.
About 2 months later *I went to Kyushu and failed miserably* when I was unable to find a hotel room due to Japan’s wanderlust during Golden Week. I can be quite persistent, so I went back down south a week or two later to explore the northern Kyushu locations I was eager to visit for quite a while. This time everything went according to plan, so my tour ended in Yamaguchi prefecture with half a day to spare. So I jumped on a train and went back to the Japanese Sex Museum.
A ton of people watched the walking tour video I shot there, but while the feedback was generally positive, some viewers thought that it was way too short, being only 6 minutes long. Open for constructive criticism my idea was to go back to the museum, shoot a longer video and maybe take some additional photos. In and out in an hour, two tops – I had been there just recently, how much could have changed in less than 2 months? Well… I left after four hours to catch my last train back to Osaka!

Interestingly enough not a lot changed. The place looked almost the same, except for one minor difference – somebody opened two doors, emergency exits, allowing not only some foliage to enter, but also a few rays of light. Not much, but enough to use natural light with the help of a tripod and long exposure times for almost every single photo. During my first visit I had to illuminate about 80% of the photos manually and individually with a flashlight since it was completely dark in most of the rooms. On my second visit the process was almost as time-consuming as before, but the photos looked completely different, even when I took pictures of the same objects. And so one hour turned into two turned into three turned into four…

This is actually more or less a photo and video update since I already wrote about the sex museum’s history in my previous article – and since nothing happened while I revisited the place, here is the new material for your viewing pleasure without further ado. Enjoy!

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

Addendum 2014-07-11: According to a friend of mine the museum has been demolished a while ago – R.I.P.!

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Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures – Japan’s Second Abandoned Sex Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, House, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Taxidermy, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/11/27| 30 Comments »

When I wrote about the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in spring a lot of people seemed to enjoy my article – on Sunday I had the chance to visit the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures, Japan’s other abandoned sex museum. It wasn’t bigger, but it was less artsy and a lot more explicit! This haikyo gave the term “ruins porn” a way deeper meaning…

“House of hidden treasures” – a Japanese euphemism to describe sex museums. In the 1960s pretty much every of the 47 prefectures in Japan had a sex museum, usually located in a small spa town somewhere in the mountains. Video did not only kill the radio star, it also made pornography widely available and started the decline of many sex museums – the internet finished the job 20 years later. Nowadays there are only a handful of sex museums in Japan (although you can barely call them museums as most of them are bizarre collections of art and what some weird people think art is…) and they are fighting for survival. The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures (HHOHT) was no exception in that regard. Opened at a time when other sex museums started to close (1980), the HHOHT was equipped with the latest technology of the time (including a huge 3D pussy, created by a plastic, a gigantic lens and a mirror), but ran into financial trouble in the new millennium – closing was considered in 2007 (after lowering the entrance fee by 1000 Yen to 1500 Yen), but it seems like it was kept open for business until March of 2010, when thieves stole a Marilyn Monroe wax figure, a female wax figure with a snake around her neck, a belly dance doll and two travelers’ guardian deities. While most other sex museums get rid of their exhibits (by throwing them away or selling them) and then become another parking lot, the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures became the haikyo Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures – one of two known abandoned sex museums in Japan.

Much to my surprise the HHOHD was quite different from the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in Japan’s south. Instead of featuring dozens of wooden and stone statues the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was stuffed with taxidermy animals – most of them copulating: Horses, elks, zebras, boars, lions, monkeys, all kinds of birds… I’ve never seen that many stuffed animals anywhere. And while most of the sculptures at this museum didn’t even seem to be made from real stone, all the taxidermy animals were real and in pretty good condition – if not for the sex part the museum should have been famous for its stuffed animals. But of course there was so much more to see: paintings, drawings, animatronics, a shooting game called “French Ponpon” (5 shots with a gun: 100 Yen), a huge vibrating penis to sit on, sculptures, shrines (dedicated to birth or equipped with penis shaped statues), and wax figures in a bizarre forest scene – starring a big red demon (with a surprisingly small dick) and a naked woman, being watched by horny, peeping or even mating animals. The most strange thing though was found on the basement floor – it appeared to be another shooting game. This time participants had to shoot “water” from a huge golden penis at a naked female doll. I’m sure when the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was still in business it was all fun and games, but this time there was a victim. My haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuran* wanted to have a closer look at the naked woman and stepped into what seemed to be a concrete pool – except that the surface wasn’t concrete, but gypsum floating on top of the still intact pool; resulting in a mild shock and lots of wet clothes. In hindsight the water in the shooting game must have been colored white for a more “realistic” approach; a closer look at the female doll confirmed that assumption. (Luckily Michael’s equipment wasn’t damaged thanks to a water-proof camera!) Instead of going back to the car and changing clothes Michael dried himself and his stuff up as good as possible and continued shooting for 45 minutes with one bare foot! What a trooper, especially since the place was literally freezing cold. Most of the rooms had dripping water, and on the lower floor the water froze to icicles or drops on the ground! It was so cold I could see my own breath and after a while my fingers started to hurt – I can only imagine how Michael must have felt; who even refused to leave right away when we both heard some noise from the upper floor, followed by footsteps – because he hadn’t shot a pitch black room in the back yet…

The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasure was a massive location and a real photography challenge thanks to lots of dark areas, massive amounts of glass and really weird setups; not challenging but weird BTW was the sukiyaki and ramen restaurant above the museum – I left that part out completely as it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the sex museum itself. All in all Michael and I spent almost 5 hours at the HHOHT – more time than at any other place before except for the *Nakagusuku Hotel* in *Okinawa*. And it was well worth it – I barely ever shot as many interesting and unique photos before. I also recommend watching the walking tour I shot as it shows the setup of the museum much better than I could describe it with words and photos. Speaking of which – here they are…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

Addendum 2014-07-11: According friends of mine the museum has been severely vandalized since I visited it – R.I.P.!
Addendum 2015-08-18: I revisited the sex museum in late 2014 and wrote an article about it – Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures Revisited (The Rape And Death Of An Abandoned Sex Museum)

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Japanese Sex Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Sex, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2012/03/23| 20 Comments »

The abandoned Japanese Sex Museum (a.k.a. the Mansion of the Hidden Treasure) first caught my attention in 2009 when I first started doing some research about haikyo on Japanese blogs. Three years ago the museum showed up on two or three homepages; both urbex and more general pop culture blogs. After that it basically disappeared, I haven’t seen pictures of the place ever since. So what happened? Boarded up? Security? Maybe demolition? Since *Michael* and I *were in the area anyways* we decided to find out, especially since the museum was pretty much on top of both of our “Places I Want To Explore” lists.
I guess the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum, along with the *Maya Hotel* and *Nara Dreamland*, was actually one of the locations that convinced me that Japan not only has abandoned places, but that it has some great ones. There are not that many sex museums in the world overall – so an abandoned sex museum is pretty unique! (Although “Abandoned erotic art museum” would be a slightly more correct name for the place now that I know what’s to find there.)

Opened on October 1st 1978 the Mansion of the Hidden Treasure was in business for almost 20 years before it was closed in the second half of 1997. Mansion of the Hidden Treasure is actually a great name since the exterior looks like a massive, old-style Japanese mansion, like a fortress almost. The entrance was guarded by a statue of Daikoku, the God of Great Darkness and one of the Seven Gods of Fortune. Opening hours were from 9 a.m. till 11 p.m. and the entrance fee was 1000 Yen according to a pamphlet that was lying around in an office room. Exploring the place further we found actual tickets with a printed price of 1300 Yen, so I guess the entrance fee was raised at least once during the 19 years of business. Several vending machines near the entrance and the exit offered all kinds of items, for example erotic playing cards and saucy postcards at the price of 300 Yen. One of the trashed rooms had a small stage and nearby we found a sign that said “Nude Show 2500 Yen”, so I guess it’s safe to say that there were live performances at the museum, too.

(If you are easily offended by sexual contents and you nevertheless read this far I strongly recommend to move on to another posting as from now the article will become a little bit more specific – while at no point pornographic I might mention the p-word once in a while and the photos at the end… or dear… well, it’s an abandoned sex museum, of course the exhibits are 99% erotica!)

As you may or may not know pornography in Japan is usually censored due to article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan which says that people who sell or distribute obscene materials can be punished by fines or imprisonment – meaning that genitalia are usually blacked out, white out or pixelated with mosaic. Article 175 was part of the original Criminal Code passed in 1907 and remains pretty much unchanged till this very day. It was the written manifestation of the Meiji Era efforts to reduce the publication of pornographic materials. Before the second half of the 19th century the shunga, erotic woodblock prints and therefore a type of ukiyo-e, were quite popular – and as explicit as modern western pornography; probably even more imaginative since the shunga not only showed traditional sexual acts, but also sex with animals, demons and deities. Some of them even showed sex with foreigners… And I guess that’s where the worldwide image of weird Japanese porn comes from. Well, that… the used panties vending machines and of course the anime series Urotsukidoji, famous for inventing tentacle rape, creating a whole genre with just one extremely disturbing scene…

With that being said there was no pornography found in the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum – only a couple of paintings (some of them in a special room with black light lamps), softcore photos (e.g. Playboy Centerfolds), a couple of mannequins as well as lots and lots of wooden and stone sculptures; dozens of them, to be accurate. Sculptures of penises, vaginas, combinations of both, couples in the act, buttocks, masturbating animals, priests, deities, demons and whatever you can imagine. In one room there was a forest scene with penis shaped mushrooms. Or mushroom shaped penises. Your guess is as good as mine. It was almost impossible to open your eyes without looking at a phallic symbol.

While two or three rooms were completely trashed (basically the entrance and the exit areas as well as the offices upstairs) some of the exhibition area’s ceiling was quite moldy, but still in good shape. Those huge statues must have been insanely heavy, especially sculptures like the stone penis with a length of almost two meters, and let’s be honest: Who would actually hit a giant stone vajayjay with a sledgehammer or tip over a couple of marble dicks? Even the most ruthless vandal respects those symbols!

Sadly that didn’t apply for the female models. The main exhibits in the last room were stolen (or “taken to security” by some previous explorers…) a year or two ago. One was a wax model of the famous European softcore erotic character Emmanuelle, the other one was a replica of Marilyn Monroe – both presented in slinky poses behind now broken glass. The already mentioned pamphlet / flyer featured photos of both wax figures and they looked pretty amazing. Even more so on the already mentioned Japanese blogs I saw a couple of years ago. When the museum was still open to the public the wax figures were scantily dressed and well-lit behind glass, but once it was abandoned the new visitors had less respect and undressed both Marilyn and Emmanuelle to show lower body parts that were out of sight before – and surprisingly both models were not as anatomically impaired as a Ken doll.
The left behind mannequins on the other hand were exactly that: Rather gender neutral below that waist and more or less what you can see at every clothing store when the clerks redress the shop window dummies. Of course they were all (partly) dismembered and slightly damaged, but they were basically normal mannequins… except for the really disturbing “Sleeping Beauty” one, which had vibrators mutating out of her nipples.

The main challenge from a photography point of view was the fact that 80% of the museum was pitch black, which meant that I had to take every shot with a tripod and illuminate every photo individually with my flashlight; similar to what I did at the *Lost Subterranean Shrine*.

With a sheer endless amount of statues and the time consuming process of taking photos Michael and I spent a whopping four hours at this fascinating location. Like I mentioned at the beginning, we both had high expectations about the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum and they were not only met, but exceeded. This haikyo is without the shadow of a doubt one of the best abandoned places in Japan and it would be a place worth visiting anywhere in the world. I just hope that future visitors will treat the location with the same respect Michael and I did so it will put a smile on the faces of urban explorers for decades to come…

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Addendum 2012-09-10: If you liked this article you might enjoy the abandoned *Japanese Strip Club*, too…

Addendum 2012-11-27: I just posted an article about another abandoned Japanese sex museum: *Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures*

Addendum 2013-05-09: Two months later I revisited the museum – *click here for more photos and videos*!

Addendum 2014-07-11: According to a friend of mine the museum has been demolished a while ago – R.I.P.!

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