You like James Bond movies?
If you watched “Skyfall” maybe you wondered what a weird and spooky stage set they used
in some scenes.
A concrete island with tumble-down houses and not a single tree or plant around.
The gloomiest place on Earth you’ve ever seen, for sure.
Can it be real?
In fact, it is.
Welcome to Hashima!
Hashima is an island 9 miles from Nagasaki.
It’s one of many hundreds of uninhabited islands in Nagasaki prefecture.
Unlike others, which are green and covered with forests, Hashima looks like bare rocks
with no plants on them.
If you look closer you’ll see that the rocks are actually empty high-risers standing on
manmade coastal banks.
The key to the island’s secret is in the coal mining.
16.5 million tons of coal were taken from the ocean’s bottom to the surface near Hashima
for its century-long history.
But in 1974 the locals left the island forever.
For many centuries, people living on Takashima – a big island not far from Hashima, gathered
coal, which lay close to the surface.
They used it to heat their houses and called “goheita” after the man, who, as legend
has it, accidentlly found its fuel qualities.
In 18-19th centuries Takashima island was part of feudal lands belonging to the Fukahori
family.
They saw the profit that coal mining started to bring and took control of all the bargains
in their own hands.
Islanders served just as a work force to them, and soon coal mining became the basis of the
local economy.
In 1850-s Nagasaki became an international port on the way to China and a way station
for foreign commercial cargos.
Great Britain, The USA and other Western countries were replacing their sailing ships with steamers,
and demand for coal was growing.
It made the Fukahori widen the territory of coal mining.
They approached a Scotch entrepreneur Thomas B. Glover for help.
Till that time the method of coal extraction was very primitive: a miner had to cut pieces
of coal from an open surface with a twibill.
When coal was exhausted or the open-cast got too deep and unsafe they would just move to
another place.
Glover brought modern British equipment and drifted a vertical coalmine to the island
coal reserves.
In 1869 the drifters reached the depth of 150 ft, and modern coal mining began in Japan.
Takashima coal had a high quality and soon filled the treasury of Nagasaki with foreign
currency.
Fukahori made up their mind to develop reserves on the neighboring islands, and this is how
a chain of lifeless rocks called Hashima became a coal island too.
At the end of the 19th century they sold the island to Mitsubishi, which was a shipping
enterprise then.
The new owner built dwelling houses for workers and made tall fortifications, which hade the
island look similar to a battleship gliding on the waves.
The resemblance was so strong that a local newspaper reporter called it Gunkanjima (the
island of ships).
The nickname soon displaced the official name from the spoken word.
Hashima produced about 150.000 tons of coal each year, and its population in 1916 was
3000 people.
It was then that Mitsubishi built a concrete residential complex to make up for shortfall
of living space.
It was the first big concrete building in Japan.
In fact, the first big concrete building in America –Ingalls in Cincinnati - was built
only 14 years earlier.
So Hashima’s building was a frontman of the new architectural era in Japan.
A 6-storied house built at the south of the island gave workers and their families small
but private apartments.
Each of them consisted of a 106 sq ft room with a tatami.
Bathroom, kitchen and lavatory were in public use.
2 years later an even bigger residential complex was built in the center of the island.
It was the biggest in Japan, had 9 stories from the ocean side and 3 – from the rock
side.
And it was only the beginning.
A total of 30 concrete houses were soon built on the island.
By 1941 the yearly production of coal in Hashima reached 410,000 tons, and it kept growing.
In 1959 the population of Hashima was over 5,200.
The total square of the island is 6.3 ha, and 60% of it are rocky slopes where most
of the dwelling houses are built.
Any level surface of the island was mainly used for facility buildings.
So, the density of population on Hashima was 835 people per hectare of the whole island,
or 1400 people per hectare of the residential area.
These figures indicate the highest density of population ever recorded in the world.
Even Warabi, the bedroom district of Tokyo and the most densely populated city, has only
141 people per hectare.
Between residential houses, there were squeezed a primary school, a secondary school, a playground,
a gym, a cinema, bars, restaurants, 25 different stores, and a Buddhist church.
There were no motorized means of transport on the island, because it would take less
than 10 minutes to walk from one end of the island to the other.
Hashima citizens had no umbrellas, as the mazes of corridors and stairs connected all
the dwelling houses and served as a transport system.
Housing, electricity and water were free for workers, but all the residents had to take
part in public works and clean-up of the territory.
As for food, clothes and other articles of commerce, the community totally depended on
the outer world.
Fresh water also had to be brought to the island before the tubes laid on the sea bottom
connected Hashima with the reservoir on the land in 1957.
Any storm that stopped the sailing for more than a day posed a threat to living on Hashima.
The most remarkable trait of this place was a total absence of the ground and plants.
Hashima was nothing more but coal ash, laid around a bare rock.
In 1963 as part of a “green campaign” Hashima residents brought soil from the mainland
and made gardens on the roofs.
They started growing vegetables and flowers there, and the island started looking a bit
less gloomy.
But it wasn’t for long.
At the end of the 1960-s Japanese economy skyrocketed, and coal was admitted an ecologically
dirty fuel.
Oil soon replaced coal as a basis of national energy programs.
The government started shutting down coalmines around the country, and Hashima wasn’t an
exclusion.
The coal mining on the island had always been difficult because of the harsh climate: storms,
earthquakes and tsunami are common in this place, and they had to keep restoring fortification
walls all the time.
It took extra money and forces and posed a risk for people living on the island.
Waves as high as 30 ft would often fall on Hashima turning its streets into a rough river.
Mitsubishi reduced staff on Hashima, retrained workers and sent them to other subsidiaries.
By 1974 there were about 2000 people left on the island, and on January 15, 1974 the
company officially announced the closure of the mine.
In 3 months all the residents of Hashima left the island forever.
For the 84 years of its history it produced about 16.5 million tons of coal.
Hashima now is an abandoned and forgotten island, which looks as a strange lighthouse
guarding the entrance to Nagasaki bay.
The modern state of the island is the result of climate influence.
Nobody tried to destroy it on purpose, but all the buildings look as if they suffered
a military attack or stayed uninhabited much longer.
The island’s state is a warning about the importance of wise forecasting.
This is what happens when the society gets too far from Nature.
The whole world might look like this after the end of urbanization and exploitation of
resources.
For many years visits to the island were forbidden and punished with a deportation from Japan.
This was a measure against thieves, who would come to Hashima in search of things they could
sell.
Things from the ghost town were in great demand among rich collectors.
The island was rediscovered once again in the 21st century and gained a wild popularity,
especially among those who are fond of ruins.
It started attracted tourists from the West, and in August 2005 it was officially opened
for journalists visits.
In September 2008 Hashima (Gunkanjima) island was included in the list to get the status
of UNESCO world heritage as a monument to a whole period of Japanese history.
Nagasaki prefecture planned to make a kind of a park – museum of the island, renovate
the decaying buildings and open it for tourists.
But the project demanded huge resources and wasn’t fully put into practice.
Since April 2009 there are regular steamer cruises to the island and around it from Nagasaki.
Tourists can come to Hashima, but access is open only to the part of the island, which
is specially equipped for visits and is considered safe.
Any attempts to search the island by oneself and leave the tourist route are dangerous.
No wonder that this scenic island was used as a location for shooting movies.
In 2009, it was the location for the TV series “Life after people” as a living example
of what happens to a city left by people 35 years ago.
And in 2011, some of the most thrilling and sinister scenes of “Skyfall” were also
filmed here.
Would you like to see with your own eyes what happens to cities uninhabited by people?
Let me know down in the comments!
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