Tatami Mats

The tatami mats in this photograph were not here when the building first opened. Asahi Elementary School began its life in 1975 as a reinforced-concrete three-storey building on the site of the demolished Yubari Daini Elementary School. It was a consolidation school, absorbing three predecessor schools whose combined enrolment had once numbered in the thousands. By the time Asahi opened, only 351 students remained across 13 classes. The coal mines that had filled Yubari's classrooms were already closing. The school itself closed on 31 March 1983, eight years after it was built, merging into Yubari Elementary School as the city's population continued its long fall from a 1960 census peak of 107,972. The building sat in the Fukuzumi district, along Hokkaido Prefectural Road 38, adjacent to what would become the Coal History Village. In the mid-1990s, Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu Co., Ltd., a third-sector tourism entity established by Yubari City in October 1994, converted the former school into a public lodging and group training facility. Classrooms were refloored with tatami mats and repurposed as guest rooms. The facility was named Family School Fureai. It operated until 2006, when Yubari City declared its intention to seek fiscal rehabilitation, having accumulated deficits of approximately ¥35.3 billion. The tourism business account that included Family School Fureai was the single largest contributor to the collapse, accounting for ¥18.6 billion, or 53 per cent of the total deficit to be eliminated. Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu filed for bankruptcy on 2 April 2007, with total debts of ¥5.46 billion. Family School Fureai was not among the facilities transferred to the successor operator. It was left unmanaged. This photograph, made in 2016, records what the lodging phase left behind. The mats are stacked as if someone intended to return for them. Their woven surfaces hold the wear of years of use, now silent in the empty room.