Kuwashima Hospital

Kuwashima Hospital is an abandoned hospital in Yubari, Hokkaido. The clinic closed in the mid-1990s as Yubari's coal economy emptied the city. The population of Yubari peaked at over 100,000 in the 1960s during the mining boom, dropped to around 11,000 by the early 2000s, and is now under 7,000. The municipality declared bankruptcy in 2007, the first in modern Japan. The hospital sits among a network of empty schools, hotels, and public buildings left behind as the population dropped by more than 90 per cent. The interior remains as it was at closure, with patient rooms, a surgical suite, and a rehabilitation room still in place under three decades of decay.