The Japanese village and deer park

摘要

Not so long ago, Orange County, California, played host to a unique landscape, the Japanese Village and Deer Park. From 1967 to 1974 this diminutive theme park provided southern Californians with an oblique glimpse into an ostensibly exotic culture few would ever see firsthand. Sprouting from thirty-three acres of sandy-soiled former dairy lands and orchards of the small town of Buena Park, the improbably verdant cultural attraction offered itself as a microcosm of Japan. Where once only Jersey cowsroamed, a herd of four hundred exotic sika deer wandered among the bamboo and torii gates, presided over by lovely 'almond-eyed' attendants in kimonos (figure 1).