Boarded Public Housing

A block of public housing in Yubari, Hokkaido, sits boarded up behind rusting park equipment in the foreground. The housing block is four storeys, concrete-framed, the apartment doors and windows covered with steel sheeting. The park equipment is the standard set: swings, a slide, a small rocking horse on a spring. The metalwork has rusted to a uniform reddish-brown. The grass between the equipment and the building has grown long. There are no children. There are also no parents to bring children. The entire block was vacated when the residents were relocated. The park equipment was left because nobody had a reason to take it.

Public housing in Japanese coal towns was built to keep miners' families close to the pit. When the mines closed, the housing lost its purpose. In Yubari, blocks like this one were emptied as the population fell. Residents who stayed in the city moved into newer or smaller buildings; those who left went to other Hokkaido towns or to mainland Japan. The blocks were boarded up to discourage entry and left in place because demolition was an additional municipal cost the city could not afford. Yubari declared bankruptcy in 2007. The block in this photograph has been like this since well before then.