Control Room Window

A single window in one of the control rooms at Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant looks out across the Hokkaido valley toward the surrounding pines and the bare slopes beyond. The window frame is steel, painted in the standard industrial green of the plant, rusted along the seams where Hokkaido winters worked at the metal. The glazing is single-pane industrial glass, intact across most of the frame but cracked in one panel. The window sill below the glazing carries dust and the residue of decades of working-room use: a coffee cup, a small notebook, a pencil. The view through the window is the only colour in the room; everything inside is the grey of dust and the green of fading paint.

Control-room windows at thermal power stations were as much about psychological relief as light. Operators sat at the panels through long shifts watching the gauges and the alarm board, and a window with a view was a working necessity. Shimizusawa was built in 1926 by Hokutan to power the Yubari coal mines and the town built around them. The plant ran for sixty-four years. After operations ceased in 1990 the control room was switched off and the building sealed. The window and the items on the sill have stayed in place. The view across the valley has changed; the pines are taller, and the slopes are recovering from a century of mining.