Living Quarters Walkway

A concrete walkway winds through the former living quarters of the Ogurawa settlement, the residential community built by Nitchitsu to house the workforce of Chichibu Mine deep in the upper Nakatsugawa valley. Vegetation crowds in from both sides, advancing across the path's surface and through the gaps in surrounding structures. The concrete is weathered and discoloured. Nothing has been maintained here for years. The Ogurawa settlement was a company town in the fullest sense. Nitchitsu, the operating company, built the housing, the school, the clinic, the bathhouse, the shops and the post office. Workers' apartment blocks were concrete, with shared facilities. Managers' residences had tiled roofs. The hierarchy of the mine was written into the architecture of the neighbourhood. Chichibu Mine, known also as the Nichitsu Mine after its operator, had recorded gold workings as far back as 1608. Full-scale industrial mining under the Nitchitsu group began in 1940, and through the 1960s the settlement reached its peak. Annual ore output hit 500,000 tonnes of crude ore, primarily zinc and magnetite, and the community grew to more than 2,000 people. A cultural hall, general stores, and a school with 274 students in 1959 served a population that, by one account, made the settlement more prosperous than downtown Chichibu at the time. Metal extraction ceased in 1978. As the ore ran out, families left. The school closed in March 1984 with a final cohort of 7 students. The last general store shut around 2003. By September 2006, the last permanent resident had gone, and the Ogurawa settlement was formally classified as uninhabited. This photograph was made in 2016, a decade after that final departure. The valley's dense mountain forest, which had always pressed against the edges of the settlement, has since moved steadily inward. The walkway remains, but the community it once connected does not.