Headframe Lattice

The steel lattice of a mine headframe rises above a slope of dry golden grass on Ikeshima, its diagonal bracing weathered to deep orange-brown. Light blue paint remains on the upper right sections, the last of whatever coat was applied before the mine closed. Power lines run across the frame toward a corrugated iron shed in the middle ground, ordinary infrastructure now carrying nothing of consequence. Two vertical shafts served Ikeshima Coal Mine. The first was completed in 1967, the same year the island commissioned its own coal-fired power station and a seawater-desalination plant, the kind of engineering a remote island requires when it cannot draw from the mainland grid. The second shaft was completed in 1981. From these shafts, personnel descended to a working level about 650 metres below sea level, then travelled by high-speed man-car along roadways that eventually totalled about 96 kilometres underground, reaching faces far out beneath the seabed off the islet of Hikishima to the west. Matsushima Coal Mining opened Ikeshima to commercial output in 1959, making it the last new coal mine to open in Japan. It ran through the postwar coal boom, through the 1987 policy of phased domestic reduction, through the 1998 electricity-market liberalisation that sharpened the price gap with imported coal. Peak production came in 1985, when more than 1.5 million tonnes of clean coal was raised. The mine produced approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal across its operational life. The last descent took place on 28 November 2001. The closure ceremony followed on 23 March 2002. The headframe remained, and the lattice has been rusting since.