The Slow Demise of Rural Japan: Early Winter Edition
Some recent shots
Go to almost any hamlet here in rural Japan and there will be at least one house like this:
Another angle:
This one clearly met its demise in a fire. But just down the road there was a place like this:
Eaten alive.
I wish I could find the photo, but I have seen, more than once, a half destroyed garage still with a (working) car in it.
No money to fix it up?
No motivation?
Who knows?
What gets me though, is that at the same time as these buildings are obviously meeting their maker, just down the road we get views like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Where people still live (this is very close to that first hamlet), and actually a popular Kominka restaurant lies to the left of this photo.
And then of course, there are also places like this:
Which I for one find absolutely stunning. There was no-one around here when I took it, but there was plenty of snow, just not visible in the photo.
I drove a little further and came across this:
Just a random building in the middle of a random field. Who knows what goes on there. To be honest though, I think it would make a great spot for a cabin, who’s with me?
On that note:
Daily Yamabushi for The Week and The Week Before
Daily Yamabushi posts for the week of November 21 to 27, 2025.
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And one more week. Because life. Sorry (not sorry)
Daily Yamabushi posts for the week of November 28 to December 4, 2025.
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Love these photos, takes me out of the concrete jungle of Tokyo and fast paced life....
It’s amazing you focused on this—I was just having the same conversation w friends today.
In particular you point out the extreme beauty going on around this slow crumbling. What is everyone thinking? Where we are at the bottom tip of Chiba it’s one and the same. Houses or just even empty land being slow consumed on some of the most gorgeous real estate imaginable. If I picked up our little hamlet and deposited it on the coastline of California, which it looks IDENTICAL to, there’d be condos and houses and shops 25 rows deep, all clambering for a piece of the view.
In Chiba? Nothing. Dirt, scrabble weeds, and crumbling shacks every few kilometers of empty land. When I bought my land, they almost paid me to take it.
Of course I don’t want all those houses or shops pining for a slice of Malibu. But I do have to wonder at peoples’ priorities and values.