Goodbye To Japan’s Homage To Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City

It doesn’t take too many twists and turns on the internet before you reach something about Kowloon Walled City. Or maybe that’s just me. I’m fascinated by extreme, unique places, and the Walled City is certainly that. Created out of a loophole in the law, it became the most densely populated place in the history of the world.

A place of lawless anarchy, it was torn down in 1994 and passed into the stuff of legend. Then it reappeared, in a way. An arcade in Japan modeled its interior after the Walled City and for years it gave visitors a taste of the aesthetics of a place then only seen in fascinating YouTube clips, video games, and movies. Then a few weeks ago, Warehouse Kawasaki sadly closed. I was lucky enough to visit this summer and took lots of pictures.

Warehouse Kawasaki was a five-story arcade and gaming. Stepping inside was like stepping out of time, and changing location, to a hodgepodge of buildings that once sat under the flight plan of Kai Tak airport (which also disappeared with the march of time in 1998).

I entered from the street, arriving on foot.

Most people I would assume would have parked in the garage. If you had, there was a cool tunnel with “floating” rocks that give an even better indication you were stepping into another world.

The ground floor has fake windows and grungy decor, like you’re passing into the Walled City itself.

There were elevators, but I took the escalator up. The main floor was really where the conversion comes into its own.

You were faced with multi-story building facades that depicted apartments and storefronts as you might have seen in the Walled City.

Artificial skinned-foul hang on racks, clothes were strung on lines, and everywhere there were signs in Chinese and English.

Tables gave you a place to sit and enjoy the bizarre environment. Going up a floor, you got an even better, closer view to the upper-levels of the “city.” Neon signs and more fake windows created quite an effective illusion.

The rest of the building was, surprisingly, a pretty normal Japanese arcade.

There were big video games, pachinko, brightly-lit claw cranes, and on the top floor, pool tables (and an even more out of place Roman fountain).

In all, it was a fascinating place, not least for the disconnect between the very traditional Japanese arcade aspect, and the impressively-done life-size diorama of a place 30+ years in the past, and 1,800 miles away.

Today Kowloon Walled City is gone, and in its place is a park with a plaque and metal model in remembrance of the place where 50,000 people lived and were forcibly removed. Gone now too is the Warehouse Kawasaki. I’m glad I got to see the latter while its wonderful weirdness was still open.