Western Village first opened its doors back in the early 1970s. Originally quite a modest affair known as Kinugawa Family Ranch, the Wild West theme park did well and gradually expanded, hence the name change. Yet despite such success, changing times resulted in changing fortunes, and in 2006 it was forced to close meaning that the park now sits empty and forlorn by the side of the road. An odd, wholly unexpected sight in a relatively sparsely populated area a few hours north of Tokyo. Is this a premonition of American politics gone wild?
I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy!
Increasingly battered by the weather over an era of neglect, it looks like a Hollywood Western movie set.
Bank about to be robbed
Visiting at the end of a politically tumultuous 2016, one arrives by stagecoach. It was the parks haunted looking residents and their unintended, yet no less terrifying depiction of a world turned utterly upside down.
As a follicly challenged right winger with a conflicted orange complexion, such a choice seems disturbingly prescient anticipating the coming train wreck.
While those set to benefit blithely carry on wilfully ignorant of the slow, piecemeal disintegration of everything they are supposed to stand for. Are these the ones who are above the law?
And such blatant disregard for procedure and accountability is cynically carried out while the masses are kept mostly in the dark by complicit organisations happy or at the very least content to peddle untruths and create distractions.
Leaving those in opposition vilified, confused and increasingly isolated.
Rendering them utterly unable to stop the legacy of a once proud party being completely desecrated.
The whole horrid state of affairs culminating in a genuinely great country being reduced to nothing but its greatest fear(s).