Yokosuka's Disappeared Ghost Village

One stop to the north of JR Yokosuka Station is Taura Station .... and, like other parts of the City, since there is not a lot of flat land  near the coast, over the years residents built their homes up in the hills and bluffs, often concentrating together in small valleys called: 谷戸 (yato).

One such area was the 4-Chome section of Taura, where two small clusters of houses were built in green-gloomy vales, only accessible via narrow roads (usable by walking or two-wheels) .... the irregularly-shaped areas are shown below, shaded in orange, on the left-hand-side of the small red circle on this map of the Taura area:       

People lived normally in the (inconvenient) Taura 4-Chome until the 1990s, when a land development company came up with a scheme to buy up the housing lots and build a large high-rise housing complex called "Shonan New Town" .... however, the project never materialized, and the area was left untouched for the next 20 years, turning it into 田浦廃村 (Taura Ghost Village) .... and it became famous in among the those who visit, photograph, record, and write/blog about 廃墟  Hai-kyo, or modern ruins .... As one blogger states:

    "Haikyo simply means ruins in Japanese. But haikyo also describes the Japanese version of the hobby known as urban exploration. Haikyoists visit abandoned towns, houses, hospitals, schools, industrial sites, theme parks, and virtually any forgotten or abandoned place. I have explored those beautiful ruins for many years."

Here are examples:

  https://haikyo.org/     

  https://blog.gaijinpot.com/urban-exploration-japan-what-is-haikyo/

And due to its proximity to Tokyo, Yokosuka's haikyo -- Taura Ghost Village -- became famous .... and here are some photos of what it looked like (and a spooky video at the link):

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TOu_lL5Jik

However, a few years ago, Taura Ghost Village disappeared, as a new company started clearing the area for installation of a "Mega-Solar" electricity generation plant (currently under construction) .... this will be the second such installation in Yokosuka City .... The first one is located in the Takeyama hills area, and looks like this:

 













Taura's 4-Chome Ghost Village has really joined the ghost world .... All gone, except for ones and zeros, digital memories on the internet....