Nikko, Tochigi, Japan - 1970s-2000s

Kinugawa Kan

Kinugawa Kan was a resort hotel in the Kinugawa Onsen district of Tochigi Prefecture, one of many large hotels built along the Kinugawa River during Japan's postwar economic boom to accommodate the domestic group travel market. Company retreats, package tours, and organised group bookings sustained the district through the Showa period.

The resort economy of Kinugawa changed in the 1990s. The bubble economy collapsed, corporate travel budgets contracted, and younger Japanese shifted toward independent travel. Occupancy fell across the district. Hotels that had been profitable through the boom found themselves unable to service their debts. Kinugawa Kan was among those that closed and were left standing.

The hotel's closure left the building intact. Guest rooms with their tatami and engawa corridors, the banquet halls, the lobby, and the dining areas were sealed as they stood. The engawa corridors that connected interior rooms to views of the river and mountain were a standard feature of traditional resort hotel design; at Kinugawa Kan, with the hotel empty, the afternoon light through those corridors had no function except to move across the floor.

The photographs were made inside the hotel in 2016.