Forecourt and Fountain

A statue on a circular plinth rises from a planter at the base of one of the reinforced-concrete apartment blocks at Ikeshima Coal Mine. The planter is overgrown, the courtyard asphalt cracked and threaded through with dry grass. Dense ivy has climbed the building's left flank. Behind the roofline, the mine headframe still stands against a bright, cloud-scattered sky, deep shadow falling across the building's left face. The apartment blocks at Ikeshima were a product of the island's constraints. Mainland coal towns spread in low timber rows; Ikeshima, with an area of about 1.08 km², had no room to do that. Matsushima Coal Mining built upward in reinforced concrete, stacking a population that reached 7,770 at its 1970 peak into towers with communal bathhouses and shared laundries. Rent just before the closure was about 400 yen. The mine began commercial output in 1959, the last new colliery to open in Japan, and worked an entirely undersea coalfield reaching down to about 650 m below sea level. The first vertical shaft was completed in 1967; the second in 1981. Peak production came in 1985, with more than 1.5 million tonnes raised that year. By the time the mine closed on 29 November 2001, approximately 44.54 million tonnes of clean coal had been won over the life of the operation. After the closure, about 2,500 workers were dismissed and most residents left. The population had fallen to 111 by 2021. The apartment blocks, the shopping street and the surface plant remained, and the photograph records what that courtyard holds now: a statue, a headframe, and ivy still working its way up the concrete.