Turbine Hall Walkway

The winding house at Ikeshima Coal Mine is where the cables ran. A light-blue winding engine banks along one wall, its casing fitted with rectangular and oval windows in the access doors, the paint still holding its colour decades after the last shift. A teal gantry crane spans the full width of the space, a hook hanging down toward a floor scattered with debris and flaking paint. On the opposite wall, a long run of glass-paned windows lets daylight fall across the concrete. A yellow railing runs the length of the room, its paint peeling back in curls. A pressure gauge sits on the floor below it. Ikeshima Coal Mine was the last new colliery sunk in Japan, beginning commercial output in 1959, and it operated as the last large-scale coal mine in the country until it closed on 29 November 2001. The mine was built on and beneath a small island, about 1.08 square kilometres, sitting roughly 7 kilometres off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula in the Gotō Sea. The entire worked field lay under the seabed, with the deepest workings reaching about 650 metres below sea level. By the 1990s the underground roadways totalled about 96 kilometres. The mine was operated by Matsushima Coal Mining Co., Ltd., a subsidiary within the Mitsui Matsushima group. The first vertical shaft was completed in 1967 and the second in 1981. At its 1970 peak the island's population was about 7,770; at closure, about 2,500 employees were dismissed. The peak production year was 1985, with more than 1.5 million tonnes raised. The mine produced approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal across its operational life. This photograph was made in 2026, after the winding house had stood silent for more than twenty years.