Walker on Road

Yu walks away down the road at Ikeshima, the pale light under a concrete overpass ahead of him. Ivy has overtaken the retaining wall to his right, dry grass grows along the verge, and a blue triangular pedestrian sign stands at the roadside unchanged. A white diamond marking is still legible on the asphalt, autumn leaves scattered around it. Behind the foliage, the reinforced-concrete apartment blocks of a former company mining settlement sit quietly back from the road. Ikeshima Coal Mine opened for commercial production in 1959, the last new colliery to open in Japan, and worked on until 29 November 2001 as the last large-scale coal mine in the country. At its 1970 peak, 7,770 people lived on this island of about 1.08 km², housed in reinforced-concrete high-rise blocks because the island had no room for the low timber rows typical of mainland coal towns. The mine's entire worked area lay beneath the seabed, reaching about 650 m below sea level, with underground roadways totalling some 96 km by the 1990s. Peak production came in 1985, when more than 1.5 million tonnes of coal were raised in a single year. When the mine closed, about 2,500 workers were dismissed. Most residents left. By 2021 the island's population had fallen to 111, mostly retired miners and their relatives. The shopping street and much of the housing stand disused; the apartment blocks remain, concrete and intact, set back behind the green. The photograph finds Ikeshima in 2026, a quarter-century on from the last shift. The road is quiet, the road markings faded but still there, the signage still standing. Yu walks toward the light.