Headframe and Shaft

The two sheave wheels inside this cross-braced steel lattice headframe once guided the winding ropes for shafts sunk into a coalfield that lay entirely beneath the seabed. Above ground, the tower is the most visible piece of surface plant remaining at Ikeshima Coal Mine. Below, the worked levels dropped to about 650 metres below sea level, with roadways eventually totalling about 96 kilometres and a lease covering around 35,500 hectares of submarine ground. Offshore boring confirmed the coal seams in 1948. Mine development followed in the early 1950s, coal was reached in 1955, and commercial output began in 1959, making Ikeshima the last new coal mine to open in Japan. The operator was Matsushima Coal Mining Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of what is now Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, whose corporate lineage on the Matsushima concession ran back to 1913. The island's port was completed in 1958; the first vertical shaft followed in 1967, alongside an on-island coal-fired power station and a seawater-desalination plant, both necessary on an island too remote for mains supply. The coal was a weakly-caking coking-blend grade, low in sulphur and valued for its blendability. From 1974, mining faces moved out to the working area beneath the islet of Hikishima, about 4 to 5 kilometres west, which became the mine's principal zone. Peak production came in 1985, when more than 1.5 million tonnes were raised. Lifetime output reached approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal across the mine's operating life. The mine closed on 29 November 2001, the last large-scale underground colliery in Japan. About 2,500 employees were dismissed. The island's population, which had peaked at 7,770 in 1970, had already been falling for decades; by 2021 it stood at 111. The headframe, the corrugated building behind it, and the dry grass crowding the foreground are what the 2026 photographs record.