Gunkanjima Odyssey and Yubari City
August 13, 2008
My wife came across this site, Gunkanjima Odyssey, about a tiny island called Hashima, 端島, part of Nagasaki Prefecture. However, it became known as Gunkan Island, 軍艦島, “Battleship Island” because of the buildings piled onto it. Today Gunkanjima is uninhabited, but it was once home to nearly 5,000 people (one video notes the population density was 9 times Tokyo’s) who mined coal underneath the island, beneath the sea. It had a school, movie theater, and cheap housing and was thus a good place to earn and save, until the mines closed in 1974. Everyone was then moved off the island, which has since remained uninhabited. The website (and things it’s trying to offer and sell) documents the island’s slow decay and the return of nature.
Even if you don’t understand the Japanese narration, the three video samples (scroll down to “MOVIE” and click the “Download” button for each) for the DVD are worth a look.
In nosing about the site, I see coal was found there in 1810, but production didn’t begin until 1890 (Meiji 23, 明治２３年) under Mitsubishi; here’s an English chronology of the island. This page has three pictures that show the development of the island. Here’s a map of the wider area (place names in English), including Nagasaki City (in English; check the Places of Interest), one of my favorite cities in Japan. I’d love to live and work there!
Hokkaido has a number of dying former coal-mining towns, including Yubari (夕張, famous for reckless public investment), the first Japanese city (I believe) where the population has dropped under 30,000. In Hokkaido (and probably everywhere else in Japan), a population of 30K+ entitles your polity to become an official city (i.e., Yubari City, 夕張市), which means you get more cash from higher levels of government; however, since nearly all levels of Japanese government are deep in debt, there’s accordingly been a movement to reduce Yubari City to Yubari Town (夕張町) and thereby save money. So far Yubari has hung on to its city status. Although its amazingly overpriced melons are deservedly famous, they’re apparently not paying enough of the bills (but Nestle is helping with Yubari Melon KitKat); Yubari has declared itself bankrupt.
This online video report, in English, has an exaggerated title of “Yubari: ghost town,” but it’s a good summary of Yubari. It’s been about 10 years since I last visited Yubari, and I’ve not thought much of it since, although the ramen I ate there was delicious, despite being cooked by a very elderly woman in a rickety old shop slowly sliding down the side of a mountain, the floor definitely no longer level, all liquids looking like they want to spill.
Regarding Yubari’s debt and waste, its government borrowed lots of money to build an amusement park; however, it’s too far from Sapporo (1.8 million people) to draw enough visitors and maintenance was costly, so the park finally closed. Yubari has held a film festival for a couple of years (maybe still does), but I expect it’s a lost cause. It built a museum or two, but those went like the amusement park. Yubari is featured in the 1977 Japanese movie “The Yellow Handkerchief” (幸福の黄色いハンカチ), which is dated but quite good; it’s being or has been turned into a Hollywood movie.
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