Menu Icon of a menu made of three horizontal lines
Close Icon of a cross (x)
Haikyo: Abandoned Japan

Negishi Grandstand

abandoned, haikyo, japan, japanese, kanagawa, kanto, ruin, urban exploration, urbex, yokohama

Modern horse racing was introduced to Japan in 1859, and shortly thereafter an English architect was commissioned to build the Negishi Grandstands. Emperor Meiji would make 13 trips to the stadium to view horse racing. The grandstands was one of the few structures to survive the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. It was later rebuilt by American J. H. Morgan and still stands today. The new stands could hold up to 20,000 spectators, and Emperor Hirohito was known to frequent the events held in Negishi. Horse racing was abolished by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942, and the racing grounds at Negishi were seized for the operation of a printing press and, in the lower horse stables, the housing of Australian prisoners of war. In 1945, when General MacArthur discovered the printing presses during the occupation of Japan, the U.S. Army used the presses to print over 450,000 surrender documents in English, Japanese, and Korean to be distributed across the country.