Coastal Stairway

A concrete staircase descends the cliffside at Ikeshima, its striped treads worn, its railing rusted to the same ochre as the ironwork throughout the surface plant. Dense green foliage presses in from both sides, and three power lines still cross a near-blown-out sky overhead. At the bottom, the flat roof of the main mining building holds standing water in shallow depressions. Beyond it, open sea. Ikeshima Coal Mine opened in 1959 as the last new colliery sunk in Japan. The island sits roughly 7 km off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula in the Gotō Sea, its coalfield lying entirely beneath the seabed. Development began in fiscal year 1952 following offshore boring that confirmed the seams in 1948; commercial output commenced in 1959 and ran for 42 years. The mine's worked area reached about 650 metres below sea level, and by the 1990s its underground roadways extended roughly 96 kilometres beneath the ocean floor. The surface infrastructure, two vertical shafts, hoist house, washery, conveyors, and the harbour completed in 1958, was packed onto an island of about 1.08 square kilometres. At its 1970 peak, the island carried a population of 7,770, housed in reinforced-concrete apartment towers because there was no room to spread. The mine produced more than 1.5 million tonnes of coal in its peak year of 1985, with lifetime output of approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal across its operational life. The Ikeshima Coal Mine closed on 29 November 2001. About 2,500 employees were dismissed. Most residents left. The staircase in this 2026 photograph connects a clifftop to a roof that has not carried working traffic in more than two decades. The power lines above it still run to somewhere. The sea goes on regardless.