Hashima (Abandoned) Island
Hashima Island, 15 kilometres from Nagasaki, Japan, was once
the densest human development on Earth, and today stands completely
empty and abandoned.
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Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890#fn:1″ rel=”footnote 1 and began using it as a
coal mining facility. When space for the workers began to run out,
they built Japan’s first large scale reinforced concrete apartment
block on the island in 1916. More concrete tower blocks followed,
and by 1959 the population of Hashima reached its peak of 5,259 -
an astonishing 1,391 people per 10,000 square
metres within the residential district - which is said to
be the highest population density ever recorded in the world.
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When petroleum began to replace coal here in the 1960s, coal
production at Hashima began to decline, and Mitsubishi officially
announced the closure of the mine in 1974. Today there is nobody
left at all. Protected by a high sea wall, and completely
off-limits to the public, the island is now an empty, rotting and
collapsing ghost town, as clearly demonstrated in this http://archibase.net/archinews/14101.html fantastically
eerie photo set#fn:2″
rel=”footnote 2.
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For more information on this incredible place, here’s a http://www.videosift.com/video/Abandoned-Japanese-Island short
documentary, an excellent http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/7/hashima.php in-depth
story and a rather short http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island Wikipedia
page.
Thanks to http://by.georgemandis.com/web George
Mandis, Rob Alexandre and Eric.
-
Yes, Mitsubishi has been around that long, but it turns out that
name actually refers to a large grouping of independently operated
Japanese companies which share the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi Mitsubishi brand
name. #fnref:1″ rev=”footnote ↩ -
For anyone thinking this place would make a great level for a
computer game… it just happens somebody http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer7 already did
it. #fnref:2″ rev=”footnote ↩
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