Gunkanjima – The King of all Haikyo

Close to Nagasaki lies an unpopulated island called Gunkanjima, which used to be the most dense populated place on earth.

There seem to be a new found interest in this island, because I just recently received several requests for photos from my visit back in 2004. An extensive collection of my Gunkanjima photos can be found here (scroll down to the very end to see all 137 photos).

Gunkanjima used to be the king of Japanese “Haikyo” (Japanese for ruins, abandoned places), because of its historic significance, size and condition. After being abandoned for such a long time, it recently got slightly cleaned up and turned into a tourist attraction. Back in 2004 it was an incredible dangerous adventure to visit this place, now it can be convenient visited with a ferry.

The history of Gunkanjima in a nutshell:

In 1887 a first shaft mine for mining coal was opened on a small reef called Hashima in Nagasaki Prefecture. This coal mine turned out to be quite successful and in 1907 the reef got surrounded with high concrete sea walls to protect it from further damage through the rough sea.

In 1916 the owner of Hashima, Mitsubishi, built Japan’s first concrete building of any significant size – a reinforced concrete apartment block – to inhabitate the miners and their families. Only 2 years later another nine story apartment block followed, then the tallest building ever built in Japan. The sea walls and the apartment blocks gave Hashima the appearance of a battleship and a local newspaper reporter started to call the island Gunkanjima (Battleship Island), which soon replaced the official name.

During World War II the government forcibly recruited hundreds of Korean and Chinese laborers to work in the dangerous mine shafts, leading to many accidents, suicides and deaths by starvation. The war ended shortly after August 9th, 1945, as Gunkanjima’s inhabitants saw and felt the explosion of the atomic bomb which totally devastated Nagasaki, only 16km away.

In the years after the war Gunkanjima’s coal production soared and the island became crammed with more apartment blocks, more mine shafts, a school, a hospital, a cinema, more than 20 shops, a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine, even a brothel, and the population of the only 480 x 160 meter big island reached a peak of 5,300 inhabitants in 1959. With more than 1,000 people per hectare, Gunkanjima reached the highest population density ever recorded on earth. In comparison, only 140 people per hectare live in the most populated parts of Tokyo today.

Finally in January 15th, 1974, Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of Gunkanjima’s coal mine, practically locking out the workers overnight. Shocked about these news, the miners and their families left the island at an amazing speed, leaving behind most of their belongings. After the very last resident left at April 20th, 1974, Gunkanjima became a ghost island, battered by typhoons, earthquakes and the sea with only the occasional explorer documenting the beauty of decay.

If you want to know more about Gunkanjima, I recommend to use Google as a starting point.