ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two types of modern ruins—industrial and postindustrial—to reflect on the haikyo phenomena. It examines the social, technological, and historical conditions that have enabled the mass production and consumption of haikyo imagery, and suggests that, although modern Japanese ruins, especially when they appear in the form of dystopic fantasies, provide endless opportunities for entertainment, the physical ruins themselves are more than playgrounds. As the debris of history, these sites reveal the past dreams and ambitions buried beneath new social and economic conditions. Despite Japan's clean, technologically savvy, and efficient image, the end of its high-speed economic growth, or the postwar "economic miracle," has actualized landscapes of devastation and unfulfilled promises unmentioned in tourist guidebooks. From eerie hot springs spas with no users to silent roller coasters with no riders, their collaborative work is an evocative testimony of Japan's ruins boom amid an untimely economic failure.
