Water Slide

The Coal Mining History Village at Yubari, Hokkaido, was constructed between 1978 and 1983. It was Yubari's answer to the collapse of its coal industry: a tourism complex built on the site of the mining era that had sustained the city since the 1890s. The complex included a ticket centre, an entry bridge with a clock tower, a restaurant, locker facilities, a Coal Mine Museum, and a pool and water slide complex. The Coal Mine Museum component opened in July 1980. This photograph shows one element of that pool complex: a multi-spiral water slide whose faded plastic is now streaked with long runs of rust. The colours have been drawn out by successive Hokkaido seasons. No water moves through it. The structure stands in the open, the degradation working slowly and continuously through the material. Yubari filed for fiscal rehabilitation on 6 March 2007, carrying debts of approximately 35.3 billion yen. The tourism infrastructure that had been built to replace the coal economy was central to that collapse. After the filing, the amusement rides across the History Village site were dismantled around 2008. The Coal Mine Museum was retained and continues to operate. The water slide, photographed here in 2016, remained after the dismantling. The city at its peak, recorded in the 1960 national census, held 107,972 residents. By the time this photograph was made, the population had fallen to below 10,000 and was still declining. The History Village had been designed for a city that no longer existed at that scale. What was built to draw visitors in now records, through its own deterioration, the distance between the ambition of the 1980s and the Yubari that remained.