Pylon Above Hill

From the ferry back toward the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula, Ikeshima resolves into a dark forested ridge against the last colour in the sky. A lattice transmission tower breaks the crest, power lines running from its upper arms out over the Gotō Sea, and below the hill the water sits calm, faint ripples holding the orange at the horizon. It is a quiet frame for an island that ran one of the most productive undersea coal mines in Japan. Ikeshima Coal Mine opened commercially in 1959, the last new colliery sunk in Japan, and worked continuously until 29 November 2001. The entire coalfield lay beneath the seabed, the main workings reaching about 650 m below sea level, with a second working area developed from 1974 around the islet of Hikishima, about 4 to 5 km west. Over roughly 50 years of operation, the mine raised approximately 44.54 million tonnes of clean coal. The island itself is about 1.08 km² with a circumference of about 4 km, yet at its 1970 peak it held an island population of 7,770. Because there was no room to spread, Matsushima Coal Mining Co. built reinforced-concrete high-rise apartment blocks rather than the low timber rows of mainland coal towns, and the island ran its own coal-fired power station and seawater-desalination plant from 1967. The harbour was completed in 1958; the ferry is still the only way on or off. When the mine closed, about 2,500 employees were dismissed. Most residents left. The population stood at 111 by 2021. The surface plant, the apartment blocks and the shopping street remain, largely disused, on the same small island the tower watches over from the hill.