Ivy Covered Block

One of the reinforced-concrete apartment blocks that the company built to house its workforce on Ikeshima stands almost completely consumed by ivy, its floor lines just visible beneath the growth. A concrete path runs in from the lower left, half-lost under dry grasses gone to white plume. A second block, equally covered, sits further back, and a lighter concrete facade holds its own at the far right under a hazy sky. Mainland coal towns spread their workers across low timber rows. Ikeshima had no room for that. The island measures roughly a kilometre square, and at its 1970 peak it held around 7,770 people, housed in reinforced-concrete high-rise blocks built by Matsushima Coal Mining Co. The blocks came with communal bathhouses and shared laundry facilities; rent just before the mine's closure in 2001 was about 400 yen. The island could not rely on mains power or town water, so the company commissioned its own coal-fired power station and a seawater-desalination plant in 1967. The port had been completed in 1958. Two vertical shafts, the first in 1967 and the second in 1981, gave access to the worked seams lying entirely beneath the seabed, reaching as deep as 650 metres below sea level. Commercial output ran from 1959. The mine raised more than 1.5 million tonnes in its peak year of 1985, and produced around 1.2 million tonnes a year through the late decades. When the last descent was made on 28 November 2001, about 2,500 workers were dismissed and most of the island's residents left with them. The population stood at 111 in 2021, mostly retired miners and their relatives. These blocks, built to hold thousands, now hold the weight of ivy instead.