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By Clément Bellanger
Now accessible by boat from Nagasaki, Hashima looks like an early-20th-century battleship floating in the sea, earning it the nickname Gunkanjima, literally ‘warship island.’ Once an island with small-scale coal mining, periodically used by local fishermen, became covered over the years in a concrete mixture of infrastructure and housing. The abandoned facilities create a haunting urban labyrinth, constructed of buildings sharing an identical reinforced concrete appearance. From typhoons to rogue waves, and from fires to violent winds, nothing seems to have spared the island.
The coal found on Hashima is extremely rich and very high quality. This attracted the attention of a number of companies at the beginning of Japan’s industrial revolution. Three different ones started mining coal here, but the violent winds and extreme weather conditions of the island forced them to cease operations. In 1890, Mitsubishi acquired the mine for 100,000 yen at the instigation of Scottish businessman Thomas Blake Glover. A new innovative project would make mining the island’s coal a profitable operation.
A significant component of the island loyal to mining operations.
Although operating conditions on the island were particularly harsh, the latest technical advances were used to build facilities that could be up to the task. Until 1931, the island was artificially enlarged several times with concrete breakwaters to protect it. Built to accommodate miners and other workers, while offering all the necessary amenities for their families. A hospital was built, followed by a school, several places of worship, and even a playroom. In the end, it is the houses that have left the greatest mark on the island’s history. When it opened in 1916, a four-story design was the world’s first reinforced concrete apartment building. The mixture of generation and experimentation makes the construction of a remarkable number of other buildings imaginable.
The first concrete-built apartments have a central courtyard that once housed playgrounds.
Unfortunately, the island couldn’t expand rapidly enough to keep pace with the new structures being erected on it. While kilometres of tunnels stretched underground and linked the different parts of the island together, the surface was crowded with narrow alleyways lined by markets in what was once the place with the highest population density in the world. The sea air created an atmosphere with 95% humidity and coal fumes were pumped into the air, day and night, with coal dust clinging to the skin of residents thanks to the constant humidity. The heat was extreme and the dust-laden air attacked residents’ respiratory systems. Illness was common and fires were frequent.
The location of the island’s tall buildings has given rise to a labyrinth of streets.
The island is full of attractive details. A huge reinforced concrete building, which has been expanded several times over the years, housed a nursery on the ninth floor. The schoolyard, the city’s only giant square, is open for gatherings when school is not in session. Another remarkable feature of Hashima is the massive staircase that leads from the bowels of the earth to the highest point of the island. Particularly frequented, locals nickname it “the stairway to hell. “Just climbing it caused intense difficulty breathing, but it is one of the main arteries of the island.
To compensate for the lack of services and amenities in this hostile trading city, its population (and its workers) earned wages particularly higher than those on the mainland. At the time, many miners were earning more than executives in Tokyo. As a result, nearly one hundred percent of the island’s homes featured the latest satellite television technology and other technological conveniences. But this obvious wealth masked a much darker reality.
On 5 May 2015, when UNESCO turned its attention to Hashima as it considered listing the island as part of the heritage from Japan’s industrial revolution during the Meiji era, a number of voices were raised in protest in South Korea. During World War II, Hashima was used as a place of confinement and forced labour. Many South Koreans and Chinese were held captive on the island and forced to perform the most dangerous tasks that were part of the mining operation. Fleeing the island meant death, and Japan has never acknowledged its actions. Registering the island as a heritage site came to represent a monumental step backwards in the attempts at reconciliation between South Korea and Japan. Although it has now been inscribed on UNESCO list of sites, the possibility of cancelling its nomination is still being debated and it is a source of diplomatic tension.
By AD Staff
By AD Staff
By AD Staff
A segment of a staircase that ran across the entire island.
As the demand for coal slowly declined and the available coal seams in Hashima were depleted, the population slowly left the island. Conditions on the island were harsh and young staff members regularly went to school in Nagasaki, off the island. In this context of slow exodus, a fateful date was set: April 20, 1974. That’s when Mitsubishi shut down its coal-fired power plants. . . and the whole island. The island was deserted and the company, which embodied the Japanese Industrial Revolution, disappeared overnight. No one was allowed to return to the island, which was still owned by Mitsubishi.
When Hashima was evacuated, many items were left in homes and other buildings on the island.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the company ceded the island to the city of Takashima (and then to Nagasaki when the two cities merged in 2005). Since then, work to clean up the island and existing structures has made it safer. While his life was an atmospheric ruin, Hashima has become a deserted place, popular with tourists attracted by its haunting images. These immensities of concrete have lost their original color and function, but they manage to come back to life through the testimonies of the staff and population that evokes life on this rare island built in concrete and steel.
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