Haikyo (廃墟), abandoned sites in Japan

Lately, akiya (空き家), abandoned buildings, have gained media and foreign interest for their incredibly low prices — sometimes even free — offering a chance to own property in Japan's scenic countryside. As rural areas face depopulation, local governments promote these homes through "akiya banks" to attract new residents. For foreigners, akiya offers an affordable way to experience traditional Japanese living, especially with remote work, making rural life more accessible. Renovation stories online add to the appeal, showcasing the blend of historic charm and modern comfort, turning abandoned homes into dream retreats.

Click here for more threads about akiya.

While "akiya" refers to abandoned buildings in the sense of empty houses or vacant residential properties, "haikyo" (廃墟) means "ruins" or "abandoned structures" and typically refers to derelict, decaying buildings or entire sites that have been left to deteriorate. Haikyo often includes ghost villages, deserted hotels, abandoned hospitals, and old factories or theme parks. These places are usually uninhabitable, overgrown, and sometimes dangerous to explore. Haikyo has also become a subculture of urban exploration in Japan, where people seek out and photograph these forgotten places.


Japan's landscape is dotted with abandoned villages, hospitals, and hotels — remnants of population decline, economic shifts, and changing lifestyles. As younger generations migrate to cities, rural villages are deserted, especially as ageing residents pass away. Japan's bubble economy collapse in the 1990s left many resort hotels bankrupt, while fading domestic tourism and natural disasters further contributed to closures. In healthcare, declining local populations and the consolidation of medical services into larger urban hospitals caused smaller clinics to shut down.

Many of these abandoned places remain standing due to high demolition costs, complex ownership issues, and tax laws that discourage clearing vacant land. Some sites, like old hospitals, have even gained reputations for being haunted, attracting urban explorers. These hauntingly empty spaces now serve as eerie reminders of Japan's shifting demographics and evolving social landscape.

Some of the most famous haikyo sites include:

• Gunkanjima (軍艦島), Nagasaki: A former coal-mining island with crumbling apartment blocks, it looks like a warship rising from the sea. It's a UNESCO site and partially open for tours.
• Nakagusuku Hotel (中城ホテル), Okinawa : An unfinished luxury resort abandoned in the 1970s, rumoured to be cursed and a hotspot for ghost stories.
• Kamaishi Mine (釜石鉱山), Iwate: One of Japan's oldest iron mines, now a vast labyrinth of rusted tunnels and collapsed structures.
• Maya Hotel (摩耶観光ホテル), Kobe: A once-glamorous mountaintop hotel with panoramic views of Kobe, now a decaying relic of the past.
• Sports World (スポーツワールド), Ibaraki : This abandoned water park has been overtaken by nature. Its empty pools and broken slides create an eerie atmosphere.
• Okutama Ropeway (奥多摩ロープウェイ), Tokyo: A defunct cable car line with rusted gondolas still hanging over the forest like a forgotten time capsule.
• Hachijo Royal Hotel (八丈ロイヤルホテル), Hachijojima: A vast, overgrown resort on a remote island, once a luxurious escape, now a moss-covered ruin.

Most of them are listed on the Haikyo site linked above.

Haikyo also make it into the news. Here are two recent stories:

My cycling around Japan over the last several years I've seen many of these types of buildings houses theme parks actually I think one Park but it it's pretty severe actually.

We also found several of these locations on our bicycle tours. I remember "Jungle Park" (ジャングルパーク) in Izu. I wish we had taken more photos.

I know this as urban exploration, the spelunking of manmade and often long-abandoned places. Entropy in action, like visiting a post-human world that has succumbed to the decay. Some urban exploration also explores hidden or abandoned infrastructure such as old train/metro tunnels, underground networks, catacombs (such as those in Paris). Some forms are more focused on the hidden infrastructure that may not yet be abandoned, but the average passerby may be unaware of. Tokyo has a ton of underground infrastructure like this, a whole world of underground buildings and passageways that could conceivably be abandoned at some point, and even has massive cisterns like the Kasukabe underground flood protection tank to deal with water run-off which may be visited when not in use, like a massive modern brutalist cathedral.

I've actually been to the first two places on that list, and I've heard of a couple of the others. Gunkanjima was particularly interesting as it has quite a history and was once the most densely populated place in the world. We were lucky to see it as the ocean there is especially wild, and about half of the tours have to turn back without landing due to rough waters. They had just opened it up when I went, and so only a portion amounting to about a quarter of the island was accessible. The buildings on the other side are not considered safe and are off limits, though I have seen photos that the departure from the island was so sudden that there are artifacts as if the place were frozen in time. This is the kind of ghost town is the most interesting to me, as it's an amazing visual to see this place that has stood mostly undisturbed for so long, but still succumbing to the weathers of time as it all falls apart and returns to chaos. There are small towns in America that have also been abandoned and left in a state of preserved decay, like the abandoned mining town of Bodie, California. These places are very popular for photographers and history buffs, and Bodie is actually a protected state park (unfortunately, that means the hours of operation are limited and I've never had a chance to visit myself).

Nakagusuku castle was introduced to me by Josh Simmers of the Okinawa Karate Podcast and remains is a proper 城跡, castle ruin, more of an archaeological site than anything else, and a lot is left to the imagination as you wander the large grounds. There are actually quite a few of these old ruins in Okinawa, and sometimes new ones are even rediscovered. Okinawa is not a large island, so the historical sites are usually nestled right into residential neighborhoods, but the castles are usually built up on high grounds. What I would LOVE to see is some kind of 再現 tour where you give visitors AR glasses that can show 3D models of the old buildings superimposed over the ruins themselves, and even show what it would have looked like when the king's procession came by, or the kind of reception given to foreign dignitaries.

The theme parks feel a bit like a twisted form of nostalgia but similarly inspire curiosity. The abandoned hotels and hospitals are less interesting to me, mainly because not as much time has passed since their abandonment, there isn't likely to be any interesting artifacts that tell a story as people tend to take them from places that aren't protected. They also often will further trash the place by destroying walls and windows, and to a certain extent the buildings may themselves be a safety risk as the structures become compromised over time. I think the local municipalities need to work with property owners to make sure these spaces don't become a hazard, so they either need to be protected and preserved for safe visitation, or demolished and made into something useful, or at least not hazardous for explorers.

Fox News on a young American who explored the abandoned hotels of Kinugawa Onsen in 2024:

thomas said:

Kinugawa Onsen

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It seems odd that that's abandoned---only a few kilometers from Nikko.

I was wondering about that, too. The article said these big hotels ceased operation some thirty years ago.

Kinugawa Onsen was once a bustling resort town renowned for its natural hot springs. It began to decline in the early 1990s during Japan's economic downturn. As tourism dried up, many hotels shuttered.

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There are still plenty of ryokan though.

While it is interesting to see these I always like to point out to my kids that just because they look abandoned doesn't mean that someone doesn't own them and these people are still trespassing. Also, after being unmaintained for so long it isn't wise to go adventuring through them as you could get hurt and would not be able to expect anyone to be able to rescue you or even know you needed rescuing.