Chapel

The chapel at Western Village was part of a full-scale frontier town precinct built in the mountains above Kinugawa Onsen, Nikko City, Tochigi Prefecture. Timber-framed and fitted with painted false fronts designed to replicate 1880s American main-street architecture, the buildings in this precinct included a saloon, a bank, a barbershop, a blacksmith, a sheriff's office, a hotel facade, and two haunted houses. The chapel sat among them. By 2014 its paintwork had lifted and its timber had begun the slow process of coming apart under mountain weather, with no maintenance carried out since closure. Western Village was operated by Ōtaka Enterprises Co., Ltd., under the direction of founders Ōminami Ken'ichi and Ōminami Shizuko. The site opened in October 1973 as Kinugawa Family Ranch before being formally renamed Western Village in March 1982. Over the following decades the park expanded significantly: a 914 mm gauge Western Railroad began operating in 1988, an Indian Theater opened in 1991, and a one-third scale Mount Rushmore replica anchored the American Dream Land zone that opened in 1995 at a total project cost of ¥2.5 billion. The park's closure tracked the broader economic unravelling of the Kinugawa Onsen district. Combined overnight stays at Kinugawa and Kawaji hot springs peaked at approximately 3.41 million in 1993 and fell to 1.48 million by 2011. The nationalisation of Ashikaga Bank on 29 November 2003 severed credit access for around 70 per cent of the district's accommodation providers. In September 2006, Nissin Debt Collection applied to the Tokyo District Court for foreclosure of Western Village's land and buildings. The park closed to the public on 7 December 2006. All employees were terminated by February 2007 and the site has not reopened. This photograph, made in 2014, records the chapel as it stood eight years into that abandonment: spire intact, timber failing, paint surrendering to the seasons.