Wires and Sea

The view comes from inside one of the reinforced-concrete apartment blocks that once housed the working population of Ikeshima. A dark window frame closes over the left edge and top of the scene, holding two poles against pale sky: a slender metal one whose curved head rises at the centre of the frame, and a wooden utility pole strung with looping, tangled wires and a small electrical box. Below them, dry grass runs toward a low concrete structure with a black rectangular opening, and beyond that, open water. A white lighthouse stands on a distant landmass. Ikeshima sits roughly 7 km off the Nishi-Sonogi Peninsula in the Gotō Sea, an island of about 1.08 km². Because there was no room to spread outward, the company built reinforced-concrete high-rise apartment blocks rather than the low timber rows typical of mainland coal towns. At the island's 1970 peak, 7,770 people lived here, served by their own coal-fired power station and seawater-desalination plant, both commissioned in 1967. The mine itself lay entirely beneath the seabed. Commercial output began in 1959, making Ikeshima the last new coal mine to open in Japan. It was also among the last to close: the final descent into the pit took place on 28 November 2001, and the Ikeshima Coal Mine formally closed on 29 November 2001, after about 42 years of production. Lifetime output reached approximately 44.5 million tonnes of clean coal. About 2,500 workers were dismissed at closure, and most residents left with them. The island's population stood at 111 in 2021, mostly retired miners and their relatives. The apartment blocks remain. The window framing this view is one of them, its glass gone, its concrete holding. What it now looks out on is the same water the coal ships once crossed.