Nara Dreamland: Japan's Abandoned Disneyland Copy

A Japanese businessman looked at Disneyland and decided it was not a miracle, it was a blueprint. Kunizo Matsuo, who already ran a chain of movie theaters, went from fan mode to full-on takeover mode after visiting the California park in the late 1950s.

He tried the right way first, meeting Walt Disney and working with WED Enterprises to build a Japanese version. But the licensing fees Disney demanded for character use killed the deal, so Matsuo paid for the design work anyway and built Nara Dreamland anyway, with original mascots, Ran-chan and Dori-chan, and a lineup that felt like Disneyland’s twin.

Then Tokyo Disneyland arrived with the real brand, and Nara Dreamland’s carefully copied magic started to crack fast.

The Man Who Wanted His Own Disneyland

The story starts with Kunizo Matsuo, a Japanese entertainment businessman who ran a chain of movie theaters. When he visited the newly opened Disneyland in California in the late 1950s, he was stunned by it and became obsessed with bringing that magic to Japan.

Matsuo did the logical thing first. He met with Walt Disney and began working with WED Enterprises, the very company that designed Disneyland, on plans for a Japanese version. According to reporting on the park's history, the deal collapsed over the licensing fees Disney wanted for the use of its characters.

Matsuo did not give up. He paid WED for the design work already done, then built the park anyway, rebranding it as Nara Dreamland with its own original mascots, a pair of bear characters named Ran-chan and Dori-chan.

The result, which opened on July 1, 1961, was a near-replica of Disneyland in everything but name. It had its own Main Street, a Sleeping Beauty-style castle, a Matterhorn-style mountain with a bobsled ride, a Skyway, a jungle cruise, and a monorail. At its peak it drew around 1.6 million visitors a year.

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Matsuo paid WED for what he could, then opened Nara Dreamland on July 1, 1961, basically daring Disney’s lawyers with every Main Street detail.

For a while, the park pulled about 1.6 million visitors a year, but the moment Tokyo Disneyland opened on April 15, 1983, the comparison stopped being flattering.

The Slow Death of a Dream

For two decades, Nara Dreamland thrived as Japan's homegrown answer to Disney. Then the genuine article arrived.

Tokyo Disneyland opened on April 15, 1983, run by a company that had succeeded where Matsuo failed, properly licensing the Disney brand and characters. It was an instant, massive success, and Nara Dreamland's attendance began to collapse. The park added new attractions to compete, including a well-regarded wooden roller coaster called Aska in 1998, modeled on the Coney Island Cyclone.

It was not enough.abandonedspaces.com/parks/nara-dreamland.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">coverage of the park's decline, the situation worsened sharply in 2001, when both Universal Studios Japan in nearby Osaka and Tokyo DisneySea opened. Squeezed between authentic Disney and modern Universal thrills, Dreamland had no answer.

Attendance fell to around 400,000 a year, the park grew shabby, shops closed, and rides began to rust while it was still open. Nara Dreamland closed for good on August 31, 2006, after 45 years.

It’s the same kind of comeback fantasy as the Wizard of Oz park that decayed for years before returning one weekend at a time.

A Decade as a Ruin

What happened next is why the park became world-famous. Nobody demolished it. Ownership passed to the city of Nara after the owner fell behind on property taxes, and the entire park was simply left standing, intact and abandoned.

For ten years, Nara Dreamland sat frozen. Ticket booths still held maps and brochures. Roller coaster cars sat on their tracks. Chairs and coffee machines waited in empty restaurants. Nature crept in, with bushes and trees growing through the once-mighty coasters, while the castle's giant doors banged in the wind.

It became the holy grail of haikyo, the Japanese word for ruins, and a magnet for haikyoists, the urban explorers who slipped past security guards to photograph the decaying dream. Stories spread of sensors, barbed wire, fines, and even arrests for those caught inside.

Some explorers left graffiti or arranged the park's character statues in eerie poses. The same instinct that draws people to Hashima Island, Japan's famous abandoned mining island, pulled them to Dreamland's rotting Main Street.

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Nara Dreamland tried to fight back with new rides like the Aska wooden roller coaster in 1998, but it was competing against the real Disney and the newer Universal rush.

By 2001, when Universal Studios Japan and Tokyo DisneySea opened nearby, Dreamland got squeezed from both sides, and the decline went from slow to brutal.

Wiped Off the Map

Unlike many abandoned places that linger for generations, Nara Dreamland got erased completely. In 2013 the city tried to auction the site and received no bids. It finally sold around 2015 to an Osaka real estate company, SK Housing, and demolition began in October 2016.

Over about fourteen months, crews tore down the Matterhorn mountain, the beloved Aska coaster, and everything else, finishing in December 2017. The site was flattened to bare earth.

So the ghost is gone now. There is no rusting castle to sneak into anymore, no decaying yellow Skyway, nothing. Nara Dreamland exists only in photographs and in the memories of the people who visited it, in its prime or in its haunting afterlife.

It is a strange kind of double loss. A park that began as an imitation of someone else's dream, that outlived its own usefulness, sat as a monument to faded ambition for a decade, and then was deleted from the world entirely. Japan moves fast, and modern Nara still gleams with the kind of everyday future-tech the country is known for, and there are plenty of genuine wonders in any list of interesting facts about Japan.

Dreamland was not one of the wonders. It was a beautiful, audacious copy, and now it is nothing at all. The most ambitious imitation in theme park history left no trace. Just an empty field where a borrowed dream used to stand.

Explore more lost attractions in our guide to the world's most haunting abandoned amusement parks, the decayed Disney ruin of River Country, and the mountaintop Land of Oz.

He wanted his own Disneyland, but the real ones kept opening right next door.

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