Exploring Kinugawa's Photographic Locations with umai_gohan | ISSUE #216

This time, we asked cizucu creator umai_gohan, who captures cultures and identities from around the world, to share their recommended photographic locations in the Kinugawa area.

Kinugawa is a place where traces of its bustling past coexist with its present as a tourist destination. Drawn by this sense of temporal dissonance, umai_gohan selected locations that evoke the contours of time still lingering in the landscape.

Kinugawa is a tourist destination that may be forgotten, but not erased. It was once a place bustling with visitors. While it still exists as a tourist spot, people now enjoy it in ways different from its heyday.

The remains of accommodation facilities rise from the valley, quietly overlooking those who visit. Today’s visitors come for different activities, and these ruins now form part of the landscape.

To simply call them ruins would be to overlook the strong ‘memories of life’ that remain. To call it a tourist destination feels as if time has stopped too much. I was drawn to this ambiguity between past and present, which led me to visit.

Although time should have moved forward, there is a sense that certain fragments have been left behind, as if cut out from the flow. Wanting to witness this sense of dissonance was also one of my reasons for coming.

This is the site of a large-scale accommodation facility that was once likely filled with tourists. While the structure remains, it feels like a hollow in time, with only its original purpose missing.

The arrangement of rooms, the view beyond the windows, even the railings—all evoke the time someone once spent here. In photographing the site, I focused on the ‘negative space’ created by the absence of human presence.

Because the movement, sound, and warmth that once existed are now gone, the contours of the space itself seem to stand out even more strongly.

Signboards, menus, cigarette vending machines—remnants of information from the past are scattered everywhere. As you walk through Kinugawa, you pick up these fragments one by one.
Although these pieces never form a complete picture, only the contours of the time that once existed there emerge.

Rather than chasing ‘traces of use,’ my gaze is drawn to the ‘structures left behind after use ceased.’
Even if each detail is minor, as you gather them, you begin to sense the density of memories that make up the entire place.

Layers of time that can no longer be restored remain as part of the landscape. While archival materials can tell us about the past, it seems impossible to truly feel the intensity of those days.

This land was once undoubtedly a hot spring town, where people gathered and memories accumulated in layers. How one interprets the traces left behind changes the way this place is perceived. I felt that time has not stopped, but rather continues to exist in a transformed state.

What did you think?

According to umai_gohan, photographing in Kinugawa is less about ‘searching’ for subjects and more about ‘how you receive’ what is there. On location, intuition is prioritized over composition, and decisions are made quickly. Since the entire area exists as a continuous memory, they mainly used 135mm and 80-200mm lenses to maintain distance and capture the spatial density in a straightforward manner. The comment that photographs are first replayed as memories during editing was also particularly striking.

We encourage you to visit the photographic locations recommended by umai_gohan and experience their beauty firsthand.