Empty Settlement Road

A straight road runs between two opposing worlds. On the left, five reinforced-concrete apartment blocks rise in a row, balconies projecting over the empty street, window sockets open to the weather. Dry vines have taken hold across the block faces, muting the grey concrete. On the right, dense green foliage presses down a steep embankment, reclaiming the edge of the road. A single utility pole stands midway along the street, its lines sagging between supports. These blocks were company-built housing, 社宅 (shātaku), constructed because Ikeshima offered no alternatives. The island covers roughly 1.08 km², about 4 km around, sitting some 7 km off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula in the Gotō Sea. Where mainland coal towns spread outward in low timber rows, Ikeshima had no room to spread. Matsushima Coal Mining Co. built up instead, stacking its workforce into reinforced-concrete towers with communal bathhouses and shared laundry facilities. At the 1970 peak, around 7,770 people lived on this small island. The mine that sustained them, the Ikeshima Coal Mine (池島炭鉱), was the last new colliery to open in Japan, beginning commercial output in 1959. The entire worked field lay beneath the seabed, reaching down to about 650 metres below sea level, with a second working area developed from 1974 around the islet of Hikishima, some 4 to 5 km to the west. By the 1990s the underground roadways totalled about 96 km. Peak production came in 1985, when the mine raised more than 1.5 million tonnes of coal. Cheaper imported coal and shifts in Japanese energy policy gradually eroded the case for the mine. On 29 November 2001, the Ikeshima Coal Mine closed. About 2,500 employees were dismissed. Most residents left. The apartment blocks, built to house a working island community, now stand largely empty along a road that carries almost no traffic.