Games Room

The games room at Kinugawa Kan sits on one of the lower floors of the hotel, fitted out as an after-hours space for guests between dinner and the evening bath. A pool table sits in the centre of the room, the green felt mostly intact but spotted with water stains. Along one wall, a row of pachinko machines remains in place, their glass fronts mostly broken, the playing fields exposed. A small bar at the back of the room is stripped of stock; the bar shelves carry only a few empty bottles and a glass ashtray. The carpet on the floor is damp, mould-spotted in patches. The lighting overhead is mostly out.

Games rooms were standard amenities at Japanese ryokans of Kinugawa Kan's grade through the 1970s and 1980s. They gave guests something to do between the structured parts of the day, the bath and the meal, and they ran a small bar of their own. The pool table and the pachinko machines in this photograph stayed with the room through closure. After the June 1999 bankruptcy, the building was sealed and the contents left in place. Two decades of damp and Tochigi mountain weather have done the visible damage. The pool table is still playable in principle, if the felt could be relaid.