Overgrowth

The buildings of the Ogurasawa settlement were built for miners, not for aesthetics. Company housing at Chichibu Mine was stratified by rank: managers occupied tiled-roof residences with domestic amenities, while workers' families lived in multi-storey concrete blocks with shared facilities and no private bathrooms, pressed into whatever flat ground the narrow Nakatsugawa valley allowed. The mountain sits directly behind them. There was nowhere else to put them. Chichibu Mine came under the Nichitsu group in 1937. Full-scale industrial operations commenced in 1940, and the settlement expanded to match: company housing, a clinic, a bathhouse, shops, a school. By the mid-1960s the settlement was reportedly more prosperous than downtown Chichibu. Metal extraction ceased in 1978. The school closed in the mid 1980s. The post office downgraded to simple post office status in 1986 and closed on 5 June 2018. The last permanent resident left the Ogurasawa settlement. This photograph, made in 2016, records the aftermath of that departure. Dry grass stands chest-high between the buildings. A timber utility pole carries lines that connect nothing. The windows are still intact, but the rooflines have begun to sag under the weight of years and, since February 2014, the weight of exceptional snow. The forest behind presses down, patient and indifferent. The mine that built all of this officially closed on 30 September 2022, after more than 400 years of intermittent operation.