Ikeshima

Ikeshima Island was once a thriving coal mining community with nearly 8,000 residents living on a small island. It was home to the last working coal mine in Japan, but the industry stopped in the early 2000s, and now most of the buildings have been left to decay. Fewer than 100 people still live there today.
I visited on a sunny spring day, so the atmosphere didn’t feel entirely sad, but I still had a strong sense of surrealistic loneliness and abandonment.