Japan’s Abandoned Wild West Theme Park: A Frozen Relic of the Frontier

In the heart of rural Japan, a forgotten slice of the American Wild West lies frozen in time, crumbling under nature’s relentless grip. Lukka Bradburn, an intrepid explorer, stumbled upon the eerie remains of Western Village, a once-vibrant theme park near Nikkō, Tochigi, shuttered since 2007. What he found was a ghost town straight out of a Clint Eastwood flick, complete with saloons, churches, and a startlingly intact replica of Mount Rushmore, its stone faces peering through frost-laden trees.

Opened in 1973, Western Village was a love letter to American and Italian Westerns, drawing crowds with jousting shows and frontier charm. But Tokyo Disneyland’s rise proved too much, and the park closed, left to rot like an abandoned stagecoach. Vines now choke church walls, snow buries porches, and mannequins of cowboys stand as silent sentinels in a decaying frontier town. Bradburn even found a prop gun amid the rubble and an arcade with ghostly machines still standing.

Navigating the site was surprisingly easy, with no security to speak of—just a flimsy fence. “It’s like they walked away and never looked back,” Bradburn noted, describing the snow-covered, overgrown paths. Nearby, he explored the remains of Kejonuma Leisure Land in Tohoku, closed since 2001, where a decaying Ferris wheel and children’s rides stand as relics of a bygone era, victims of Japan’s economic struggles and waning theme park fever.

These abandoned parks, once bustling with life, now sit in quiet countryside, surrounded by mountains and small towns. Bradburn met a local who, as a child, had visited Western Village and returned to capture its faded glory. The explorer himself plans to return, drawn to Japan’s lost playgrounds, remnants of a 1970s boom that peaked in the ‘90s and faded into obscurity.