Coastal Concrete Frames

Two concrete A-frames occupy the edge of a coastal outcrop on Ikeshima, their wedge legs tied by a low crossbeam, a broken dark metal arm still fixed to the apex of the taller structure. Dry golden-brown grass runs between the bases and out toward the cliff edge, where blue ocean and hazy hills take over. A single green bush grows between the two structures, the only living thing in the frame that was not engineered. These are surface remnants of the Ikeshima Coal Mine, which opened for commercial production in 1959 as the last new colliery to be sunk in Japan, and closed on 29 November 2001 as the last large-scale underground coal mine in the country. About 2,500 workers were dismissed on that date. The mine was operated by Matsushima Coal Mining Co., Ltd., a subsidiary tracing its corporate roots to Mitsui Mining's 1913 acquisition of the Matsushima concession in Nagasaki. Development at Ikeshima began in the early 1950s following offshore boring from 1948 that confirmed the seams beneath and around the island. The worked field lay entirely below the seabed, with the deepest workings reaching around 650 metres below sea level. By the 1990s, the underground roadways totalled about 96 kilometres and the mining lease covered roughly 35,500 hectares. Peak production came in 1985, when more than 1.5 million tonnes of coal were raised. The mine produced approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal across its operational life. The coal was a weakly-caking, low-sulphur blend valued for its good blendability and a calorific value of about 7,500 kcal/kg. What the photograph records now is a coastline without the industry that built everything behind it. The A-frames and their broken mechanism remain, the sea the same as it was when the last shift came up.