Shelf and Window

A three-tiered metal shelving unit stands before a large multi-pane window in a store room and workshop inside the main building of the Ikeshima Coal Mine. The upper shelf catches the only bright daylight to reach the room. Bare and leafed vines press against the grimy glass from outside, with a small cluster of green leaves growing beyond the lower right pane. A broken ceiling panel hangs above the window and a single fluorescent fixture drops loose from the ceiling. Papers, a pile of pale ceramic objects and a dark plastic bag with a reflective interior lie scattered across the shelves and the floor below. The Ikeshima Coal Mine operated beneath the seabed off the small island of Ikeshima in Nagasaki Prefecture, about 7 km off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula. The operator was Matsushima Coal Mining Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of what is now Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, whose corporate lineage at the Ikeshima concession dates to 1913. Offshore boring in 1948 confirmed the coal seams; commercial production began in 1959, making Ikeshima the last new coal mine to open in Japan. The mine worked weakly-caking coking-blend coal at depths reaching about 650 m below sea level, with underground roadways totalling about 96 km by the 1990s. Peak production of more than 1.5 million tonnes was recorded in 1985. The mine closed on 29 November 2001, with about 2,500 workers dismissed, marking the end of large-scale coal mining in Japan. The photograph was made in 2026, a quarter century after the closure. What the shelving holds now is what was left behind: paperwork, ceramic objects, the ordinary accumulation of a working room that was simply walked out of. The vines at the glass are the outside pressing in.