Throughout history, mankind has built a huge number of cities and magnificent structures, which subsequently turned out to be abandoned. One such place is the island city of Hashima. For fifty years, this land area was the most densely populated on the whole planet: here literally everything was teeming with people, and life was in full swing. However, the situation has changed: the island of Hashima has been abandoned for decades. What happened to him? Why is there no one else living there?
About the island
The last local resident of Hashima stepped onto the deck of the ship leaving for Nagasaki on April 20, 1974. Since then, rare gulls have lived in high-rise buildings dating back to the dawn of the twentieth century ...
Hashima Island, legends of which circulate around the world today, is located in southern Japan, in the East China Sea, fifteen kilometers from Nagasaki. Its name is translated from Japanese as “frontier island”, and Hashima is also called Gunkanjima - “battleship island”. The fact is that even in the 1920s, local newspaper reporters noticed that Hashima resembles the linear huge ship Tosa, which Mitsubishi Corporation was building at the shipyard in Nagasaki at that time. And although the idea of ​​making the battleship the flagship of the Japanese Navy was not lucky to come true, the "ship" nickname was firmly attached to the island.
However, Hashima did not always look so impressive. Until the end of the nineteenth century, it was one of the many rocky islands in the vicinity of Nagasaki, unsuitable for normal life and occasionally visited only by local birds and fishermen.
Change
Everything changed during the 1880s. Japan then experienced industrialization, in which coal became a valuable resource. Alternative sources of raw materials have been developed on the island of Takashima next to Hashima, capable of providing the rapidly developing metallurgical industry of Nagasaki. The success of the Takashima mines contributed to the fact that the first mine was also founded on the Hashima in 1887 by the Fukahori family clan. In 1890, the Mitsubishi concern bought the island, and the rapid development of its natural resources began.
Time passed, the country needed more and more coal ... The Mitsubishi company, which has almost unlimited financial capabilities, developed a project for the underwater extraction of fossil fuels in Hashima. In 1895, a new mine was discovered here, having a depth of 199 meters, and in 1898, another. Ultimately, under the island and the sea surrounding it, a real labyrinth was formed from underwater underground workings up to six hundred meters deep below sea level.
Construction
The Mitsubishi concern used the waste rock to be extracted from the mines to increase the territory of Hashima. A plan was developed for the construction of an entire city on the island for miners and staff. This was due to the desire to reduce costs, because it was necessary to deliver work shifts daily from Nagasaki by sea.
So, as a result of “conquering” the area from the Pacific Ocean, Hashima Island increased to 6.3 hectares. The length from west to east was 160 meters, and from north to south - 480 meters. In 1907, the Mitsubishi company surrounded the territory with a reinforced concrete wall, which served as an obstacle to the erosion of the land by frequent typhoons and the sea.
Hashima’s large-scale development began in 1916, when 150 thousand tons of coal were mined per year, and the population was 3 thousand people. For 58 years, the concern has erected 30 multi-storey buildings, schools, temples, a kindergarten, a hospital, a club for miners, swimming pools, a cinema and other facilities. There were about 25 stores alone. Finally, the silhouette of the island began to resemble the battleship “Tosa”, and Hashima got her nickname.
Residential buildings
The first major building on Hasim was the so-called Glover House, supposedly designed by Scottish engineer Thomas Glover. It was commissioned in 1916. The miners' apartment building was a seven-story building with a roof garden and a shop on the ground floor, and was Japan's first reinforced concrete building of its size. Two years later, an even larger-scale Nikkyu residential complex was built in the center of the island. In fact, Hashima Island (photo of houses can be seen in the article) has become a testing ground for a new building material, which allowed the construction of objects of previously unimaginable proportions.
In a very limited area, people tried to use any free space wisely. Between the buildings in the narrow courtyards small squares were organized for residents to relax. This is Hashima - a sign island on which no one lives, and at that time it was densely populated. The construction of residential buildings did not stop even during the Second World War, although it was frozen in other parts of the country. And this was the explanation: the warring empire needed fuel.
War time
One of the places of worship on the island is the “Ladder to Hell” - a seemingly endless climb leading to the Senpukuji Temple. It is unknown what still seemed more “hellish" to the residents of Hashima - overcoming hundreds of steep stairs or following this descent into the labyrinths of narrow city streets, often devoid of sunlight. By the way, the people who populated Hashima Island (Japan) took the temples seriously, because mining is a very dangerous job. During the war many miners were drafted into the army, the Mitsubishi concern made up for the lack of manpower by Korean and Chinese migrant workers. Thousands of people became victims of half-starved existence and ruthless exploitation in mines: some died from illness and exhaustion, others died in the face. Sometimes, people even rushed in despair from the island wall in a futile attempt to swim to the "mainland."
Recovery
After the war ended, the Japanese economy began a rapid recovery. The 1950s became the “golden years” for Hashima: the Mitsubishi company began to conduct business in a more civilized manner, a school and a hospital were opened in a mining town. In 1959, the population reached a peak. On 6.3 hectares of land, of which only 60 percent were livable, 5,259 people huddled. Hashima Island at that time did not have a single competitor in the world in terms of such an indicator as "population density": 1391 people per hectare. It is difficult for tourists who are arriving today on a deserted island of Hashima with sightseeing purpose to believe that some 55 years ago residential neighborhoods were literally packed with people.
Navigation on the “battleship”
Of course, there were no cars on the island. And why should they, if, as the locals say, getting from one end of Hashima to the other could be faster than smoking a cigarette? In rainy weather, even umbrellas were not required here: the intricate labyrinths of covered galleries, corridors and stairs connected almost all the buildings, therefore, by and large, people did not have to go out into the open air at all.
Hierarchy
Hashima Island was a place where a strict social hierarchy reigned. It was perfectly reflected in the distribution of housing. So, the manager of the Mitsubishi mine occupied the only one-story mansion on the island, built on a cliff top. Doctors, managers, teachers lived in separate houses in two-room, rather spacious apartments with a personal kitchen and a bathroom. The miners' families were allocated two-room apartments with an area of ​​20 square meters, but without their own kitchen, shower and toilet - these facilities were shared “on the floor”. Lone miners, as well as seasonal workers, lived in rooms of 10 square meters in houses built here in the early 20th century.
Mitsubishi Concern has established a so-called private-ownership dictatorship on Hashima. The company, on the one hand, gave miners jobs, provided wages, housing, and on the other hand, forcibly attracted people to public work: cleaning the territory and premises in buildings.
Dependence on the "big land"
The miners gave Japan the coal they needed, while their existence depended entirely on the supply of clothing, food, and even water from the mainland. Here, until the 1960s, there were not even plants, until in 1963 soil was brought to Hashima from the island of Kyushu , which made it possible to set up gardens on the roofs of buildings and organize small gardens and public gardens on few free sites. Only then the inhabitants of the “battleship” were able to start growing at least some vegetables.
Hashima - ghost island
Back in the early 1960s. the island seemed to have a bright future. But as a result of the cheapening of oil at the end of the decade, coal mining became increasingly unprofitable. Mines were closed all over the country, and here a small island in the East China Sea ultimately became a victim of the reorientation of the Japanese to the use of “black gold”. In early 1974, the Mitsubishi concern announced the liquidation of mines in Hashima, and the school closed in March. The last resident left the battleship on April 20. Since then, the abandoned city-island of Hashima, which has been rebuilt with such labor for 87 years, has been irreversibly destroyed. Today it serves as a kind of historical monument of Japanese society.
Tourist facility
For a long time, Hashima was closed to tourists, since the buildings erected in the first half of the 20th century were very actively degraded. But since 2009, the country's authorities began to allow everyone on the island. A special walking route was organized for visitors in the safe part of the “battleship”.
Not so long ago, Hashima Island attracted even more attention. The wave of interest rose after the last part of the epic about the adventures of James Bond, British agent 007, was released. The den of Raoul Silva, the main villain of the film “Skyfall Coordinates”, filmed in 2012, was obviously copied from Hashima, despite the fact that the picture was shot in Pinewood Studio Pavilions.
Virtual walk
Today, individual enthusiasts make proposals for the reconstruction of the entire island, because its tourist potential is truly huge. They want to organize an open-air museum here and include Hashima on the UNESCO list. However, to restore dozens of dilapidated buildings requires large financial costs, and the budget for these purposes is even difficult to predict.
Nevertheless, now anyone can wander through the labyrinths of the “battleship” without leaving home. Google Street View in July 2013 took a picture of the island, and now the inhabitants of the Earth can see not only the Hashima quarters that are currently inaccessible to tourists, but also visit the miners' apartments, abandoned buildings, observe household items and things that they left when they left.
Hashima Island is a harsh symbol of the birth of Japan ’s big industry, which at the same time clearly demonstrates that even under the rising sun, nothing lasts forever.