Huis Ten Bosch imported Dutch bricks on borrowed money — ¥229B of liabilities

Huis Ten Bosch opened in March 1992 in Nagasaki prefecture: a full-scale replica of a Dutch town — windmills, canals and bricks imported from Holland — built at a cost of about $2.5 billion. It was the flagship of Japan's bubble-era resort boom, a government-backed push to spread leisure development across the country, backed by Nagasaki prefecture and a consortium of three dozen companies.

The early crowds never matched the investment. Attendance slid through the late 1990s as Japan's asset economy deflated and consumers cut spending on nonessentials; the park drew 3.8 million visitors in 1996 and fewer every year after. The construction debt taken on during the boom stayed on the books.

By 2000 the Industrial Bank of Japan had forgiven 53 billion yen of the debt, but that was not enough. On February 26, 2003 Huis Ten Bosch Co. — one of Japan's largest theme park operators — filed for bankruptcy with about 229 billion yen ($1.95 billion) in liabilities, including a 102.3 billion yen loan from Mizuho.

The New York Times called the failure 'the legacy of a government-led expansion into local areas', part of a wave of bubble-era resorts that became white elephants on optimistic assumptions about tourism and consumer spending. Huis Ten Bosch survived under new owners and still operates, but the bankruptcy stands as the textbook case of financing a theme park for the crowds you hope for rather than the ones you get.