Kindergarten

The former Ogurawa Elementary and Middle School at Nichitsu Mining Village sits in the upper Nakatsugawa valley, roughly 43 kilometres west of Chichibu Station in Saitama Prefecture. Its classroom holds rows of small chairs and desks, each surface settled under dust, the room's contents left as they were when the last students departed. Sunlight cuts through broken windows and moves across the floor in long, uneven bands. Nothing has been cleared. The school was built in November 1952, replacing an earlier building destroyed by fire. The replacement was a two-storey structure of timber and reinforced concrete, covering 2,336 square metres on a site of just under 4,700 square metres. It had begun in 1935 as a private institution, Chichibu Gakuen, before transferring to public administration under Otaki Village in 1948 for the elementary section and 1949 for the middle school. The settlement it served was built entirely around Chichibu Mine, the sole significant metal mine in Saitama Prefecture and a node in the broader industrial operations of the Nichitsu Konzern. Full-scale mining began in 1940 under Nichitsu Mining Co. Ltd. The mine extracted zinc, magnetite, gold, silver, copper and lead; the workforce and their families filled the valley. Enrolment at the school peaked at 274 students in 1959. Metal extraction ceased in 1978. Families left as the mine contracted. Enrolment fell from 160 students in 1972 to 85 in 1973, then 46 in 1974, 25 in 1975, and 7 by the final cohort in 1984. The school closed in March 1984. The last permanent resident left the Ogurawa settlement in September 2006. This photograph was made in 2016, when the building still stood. It was demolished by April 2025 on safety grounds, the land returned to Nitchitsu Co. Ltd., which had owned the site throughout the school's existence.