The closed small park slide was in shambles

I found myself walking along the fringes of Rinshi-no-mori Park in Meguro. Once a national forestry research station, it is now a sprawling metropolitan park renowned for its rich sanctuary of rare and diverse trees. Yet, just beside this vast, carefully tended expanse lies a stark contrast: a tiny, forgotten playground, fenced off from the world by iron rails.

It appears to have been a modest amenity for the adjacent housing complex, originally built for national government workers. Those apartments were shuttered years ago. I had naturally assumed the land would soon be swallowed up by private redevelopment, but there has not been the slightest hint of progress. The buildings sit silent and empty, suspended in the exact state the last departing residents left them. Bound to the fate of the complex, this little playground was deemed off-limits, quietly sealed away and left to memory.

Beyond those iron fences, the forgotten park has, predictably, surrendered to a wild overgrowth of weeds. Just next door, from the lively grounds of Rinshi-no-mori, the joyful shouts of children running freely drift over on the breeze. Yet, there is not a sliver of space for those children to slip into this abandoned realm. Rising from the sea of untamed grass stands a solitary playground slide. Its once-cheerful coats of blue and red paint are now badly peeling and flaking away, leaving it to cut a stark, uncompromising silhouette against the greenery.

Look closely at this rugged monument of decay, however, and you will notice a slender sapling threading its way up through the rungs of the slide's rusted ladder, its leaves a vibrant, flourishing green. It is a familiar phenomenon in empty lots: a seed, perhaps carried in the droppings of a passing bird, finds a resting place in the crevices of human construction, takes root, and quietly spends years reaching upward.

While the wheels of bureaucracy turn at a glacial pace, languishing in the inertia of delayed redevelopment, the flora of the natural world wastes no time. Using the rusting remnants of our playthings as its scaffolding, nature is patiently and steadily reclaiming its lost territory.

Rinshi No Mori Park on Google Map

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