Oedo Onsen drew a million visitors a year — its lease had an expiry date

Tokyo Odaiba Oedo Onsen Monogatari opened in March 2003: an Edo-styled hot-spring theme park of real onsen water, yukata-clad guests and festival-street food halls, drawing about one million visitors a year and beloved of young Japanese and foreign tourists alike.

But the ground underneath was borrowed. The park stood on Tokyo Metropolitan Government land under a fixed-term business lease, capped at 20 years, with no renewal or extension possible under the law that governed the original contract. As the December 2021 expiry approached, the operator explored ways to continue — and found that re-contracting was legally impossible. Closure was announced in June 2021; the last day was 5 September 2021. A busy, popular landmark was evicted by the contract that had created it.

The terms were unforgiving: the buildings had to be demolished and the land returned to the city cleared. Eighteen years of brand-building ended in rubble — while the company's onsen hotels nationwide kept running, the flagship became an empty lot.