Gunkanjima
Posted on Apr 24th, 2008 at 9:27amIt was six months ago, here at my desk in Fukuoka that I stumbled upon my first sighting of Gunkanjima. The island off the coast of neighbouring Nagasaki which has lay abandoned for thirty-four years. From that moment on, I was dying to see it with my own eyes, and this week, I finally managed to do so.
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This small rocky mound, called ‘Battleship Island’ in Japanese, due to it’s eerily gunship-like silhouette, was a bustling micro-community, based around a coal-mine, owned by the Mitsubishi company in the last century. It was, at its peak, the worlds most populous place, when it was home to over 5,000 people. That was until the mine ran dry in 1974, and the company told it’s workers that they had two days to get to the Kyushu mainland if they wanted a job. Subsequently, the island was a ghost town within hours, and since then has been off-limits at the bequest of the Japanese government.
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It was home to the worlds first concrete tenement buildings, and in many ways, was a healthy and vibrant community. Complete with a school, hospital, cinema and shrine. It’s dilapidated state masks a triumph in building living quarters in confined space. Accounts of people who lived on the island talk of a difficult, but enjoyable community with all of the trappings of a modern (by contemporary standards - and tenable lifestyle.
Having circled the Island on a boat from Nagasaki Bay, my interest hasn’t waned. The place really is stunning, beautiful and epic. Approaching it from the north gives the impression of a world war two killing machine peering out from neighbouring Tashima, and seeing it from it’s easterly side reveals apartment buildings with paper sliding doors intact, and mosses growing up the sides of what were once pivotal landmarks for this disparate community of coal-miners and their families, drafted from across Japan and continental asia to quell the fuel-thirst of a rapidly industrialising nation.
Gunkanjima offers a glimpse of that often-retold hollywood tale of earth after man. No human - bar a few researchers and naughty fisherman - have stepped foot on Gunkanjima for thirty-odd years, yet it’s imposing frame still tells a story of habitation which will linger for hundreds of years without human intervention, even in the most hostile of conditions in Japan’s typhoon belt.
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The future of Gunkanjima seems uncertain. The Nagasaki government realises the draw of tourists and the film industry could be a substantial boon to it’s coffers, and plans are afoot to make the most of it’s commercial potential. Whether this means just making the island safe for visitors, or turning it into a wretched theme-park is yet to be seen. What is certain is that there are few places on earth which offer such a sight. Gunkanjima is an important landmark not only for Japan, but for humanity, in a time when we are more conscious than ever of our impact on the earth, here stands a 200 by 150 metre advertisement for responsible construction.
