The Decaying Beauty of Gunkanjima

Anyone who’s known me for a while will probably know about my rather peculiar fascination with derelict buildings.

They might be disturbed to know that I recently found out about a whole island that’s been left to rot since 1974. Especially if I add in the grisly details of feeling my pulse quicken when I saw images like this from Saiga Yuji-

- and if I’m being totally honest, I found this totally breathtaking. More so than if Koda Kumi had come in to my apartment naked. Look closely at the picture, take in the number of empty rooms there. Rooms where things once took place, where people watched television, got drunk, read books, ate dinner, made love, conceived children, died, got sick, woke up, got dressed. All the things you or I do everyday, things that leave faint echos in the lifeless buildings around us.

The tale of Gunkanjima is not as apocalyptic as you might assume given its stricken wasteland appearance.

The actual name of the island is Hashima - gunkan is Japanese for battleship and is a moniker given the island by locals inspired by the way the island looks from a distance. Hashima is about 15 kilometres west of Nagasaki, in the south-west of Japan, and once upon a time it was a bustling mining town, tapping the coal resources under the seabed.

According to Wikipedia, it also had the dubious honour of being the most densely populated place in the world at one stage -

In 1959, its population density was 835 people per hectare for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare for the residential district, supposedly the highest population density ever recorded worldwide.

All these people lived, grew up, worked and died on the island, and they lacked few facilities - you can see this just by looking at this map at makingplaces.com, which lists the various buildings that could be found on Hashima in its heyday. There are schools, a police station, a hospital and even a cinema.

And now? It’s probably a safe bet that all those things are still there, as evidenced by Saiga Yuji’s beautiful photography; still there, but in decline. Something worth seeing - the decaying evidence of lives lived, crumbling in to dust.

I so want to go to Gunkanjima. Sadly, entry to the island is currently prohibited. Anyone able to pull any strings for me?

More info at Wikipedia.
Saiga Yuji’s site - top page
Saiga Yuji’s photos of Gunkanjima then (1974)
Saiga Yuji’s photos of Gunkanjima now

and more pictures and history at making places.

Sunday, February 18th, 2007 Bizarre, Japan, Japanese History, Sushimatic Loves... Trackback URL for this entry