Grass and Hill

Dry golden grass fills the foreground of this frame, some stalks close enough to blur at the edge, so the base of a long white apartment block disappears into it. Bright yellow panels break up the building's face at regular intervals, its rows of windows evenly spaced and still intact. Behind it, a densely wooded hill climbs steeply under a clear blue sky, two weathered structures standing on the summit above the treeline. The block is one of several reinforced-concrete apartment towers that Matsushima Coal Mining built on Ikeshima to house the families of its workforce. Mainland coal towns could spread out in low timber rows; Ikeshima, an island of about 1.08 km² in the Gotō Sea off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula, could not. The company built upward instead, and fitted the towers with communal bathhouses, shared laundries and hot-water supply. At the island's 1970 peak, 7,770 people lived here. Matsushima Coal Mining had confirmed the coal seams through offshore boring in 1948 and began developing the mine from 1951 to 1952. Commercial output started in 1959, making Ikeshima Coal Mine the last new colliery to open in Japan. The entire worked field lay beneath the seabed, reaching down to about 650 m below sea level and extending to a second working area around the islet of Hikishima, about 4 to 5 km to the west, developed from 1974. Peak production came in 1985, when more than 1.5 million tonnes of coal were raised. The mine closed on 29 November 2001, the last large-scale coal mine in the country to do so, with about 2,500 employees dismissed. The apartment blocks remain. Much of the housing and the island's shopping street stand disused since the closure and the departure of most residents. A resident population of 111 was recorded in 2021, mostly retired miners and their families. The grass has grown back around the buildings' foundations, and the hill behind them, with its two structures above the treeline, looks much as it always did.