Blue Boat

A blue boat sits on dry grass on Ikeshima, well away from the water. Along its hull, painted in black and red, are the characters ガンバレ日本: Go Japan. A white ceramic figure with large black eyes and a small red mark on its head occupies the interior, keeping watch from inside the hull. A yellow pole leans out over the right edge, surrounded by weeds and scattered objects. One flower with a yellow centre blooms in the grass just in front of the bow. Behind it all, a multi-storey reinforced-concrete apartment block stands under soft, diffused light. Those blocks are what Ikeshima is built from. The island covers about 1.08 km², and at the 1970 peak, nearly 7,770 people lived on it. There was no room for the low timber rows typical of mainland coal towns, so Matsushima Coal Mining Co. built upward in concrete, with communal bathhouses, shared laundries, and a coal-fired power station and seawater-desalination plant to keep the island self-sufficient. Ikeshima was the last new coal mine to open in Japan, beginning commercial output in 1959. Over the following 42 years, the mine extracted approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal from seams running entirely beneath the seabed, reaching depths of around 650 metres below sea level. At its 1985 peak, more than 1.5 million tonnes were raised in a single year. The mine closed on 29 November 2001, when about 2,500 employees were dismissed. The apartment towers remain. The boat remains. The ceramic figure in the hull keeps its post. The photograph was made in 2026, when the island's resident population stood at around 111, mostly retired miners and their relatives.