We like to imagine Japan as a clean and technologically savvy society. Yet, little known to the outside world is a burgeoning subculture of visiting abandoned factories, mines, theme parks, and resorts that have been left behind by Japan’s bubble economy or the so-called “Lost Decade” of the 1990s. How do we make sense of this “haikyo mania” (ruin mania) practiced by Japanese ruins aficionados? My book chapter, “Japan Lost and Found: Modern Ruins as Debris of the Economic Miracle,” in the newly published Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (edited by Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade) examines this local phenomenon in a wider global context.
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