Utility Room

A utility room at Kinugawa Kan sits in the back-of-house wing of the hotel, a small concrete-walled space used for cleaning supplies, laundry equipment, and the kind of routine plant a property of this scale needed to keep running. The window has come open at some point and stayed that way; rain, wind, and moss have worked their way in. A patch of moss now spreads along the windowsill and onto the wall below. The concrete floor is stained where water has pooled. Shelving along one wall holds a few rusted metal buckets and a row of empty cleaning-product bottles. The lighting overhead is a single bulb on a hanging cord, no longer connected. Daylight reaches the room through the open window.

Utility rooms like this one handled the daily turnover work at Japanese ryokans of Kinugawa Kan's grade: laundering futon covers, restocking bath supplies, holding the cleaning equipment between morning and evening service. The work ran around the guests and was meant to be invisible. Kinugawa Kan opened in December 1942 and operated for over five decades before entering business suspension in June 1999. The building was sealed and the back-of-house spaces left in place. The open window in this photograph has been letting weather in for over two decades.