Washroom

The washroom is a small, institutional space: ceramic wall tiles darkened by years of moisture and neglect, two sinks with broken fittings set beneath a mirror coated in dust, light entering from a single high window and falling across surfaces that have not been cleaned since the building closed in 2006. It is the kind of room that never appears in official records but carries the weight of daily use across more than three decades of a building's complicated life. The building that contains it began as Yubari Municipal Asahi Elementary School, opened on 1 April 1975 in Fukuzumi, Yubari City, Hokkaido. It was a new reinforced-concrete three-storey structure built on the demolished site of Yubari Daini (Second) Elementary School, consolidating three predecessor schools whose combined enrolments had peaked in the thousands during the coal boom years of the 1950s. At opening, 351 students attended across 13 classes. The coal mines were already closing. By 31 March 1983, Asahi Elementary itself closed, merging with Yubari First Elementary to form Yubari Elementary School after just eight years of operation. Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu Co., Ltd., a third-sector tourism entity established in October 1994 with ¥30 million capital and the city's mayor as representative director, converted the vacant school building to a public lodging and group training facility called Family School Fureai. Classrooms were repurposed; communal bathing and dining facilities were added. It was the company's first facility in a portfolio that would eventually include two hotels, a hot spring, and a ski resort. At peak in FY2004, the company recorded revenue of approximately ¥1.862 billion. Yubari City declared its intention to seek fiscal rehabilitation in June 2006, having accumulated deficits of approximately ¥35.3 billion. Family School Fureai ceased accepting guests that year. Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu filed for bankruptcy on 2 April 2007, carrying total debts of ¥5.46 billion. The building was not among the facilities transferred to a successor operator. It has had no custodian since. This photograph was made in 2016, nine years into that abandonment. The washroom records what the building has become: a place where the ordinary infrastructure of daily life, tiles and pipes and mirrors, holds its position while everything around it deteriorates.