Japan's Toshimaen amusement park closes after 94 years, to make way for Harry Potter

Toshimaen amusement park was opened in 1926 [Photo: Courtesy]

A popular Tokyo amusement park on Monday closed its doors for the last time after being in business for more than nine decades, with part of the site set to make way for a “Harry Potter” theme park. Toshimaen amusement park, which opened in 1926 in northern Tokyo, caught the imagination of locals such as Junko and Hikari Abe, a mother and daughter who work at the park and met their partners there.

Junko, a 62-year-old park keeper who has worked intermittently at Toshimaen since the 1970s, said she had assumed it would be there till the end of her life. “I wanted to enjoy that place together with my daughter.” Daughter Hikari, 30, started working at the park in 2015. She had hoped to take family photos there after getting married with her fiancée, who she also met there. “It was a spot I had taken for granted because it had been there from the time I was born, so I can’t believe that it will be gone,” she said.