On Battleship Island

Since Gunkanjima re-opened to visitors last year the tours have proved to be very popular. I was lucky to get the very last seat. The part of the island that is open is at the industrial end, and visitors are fenced in and herded by guides.

 

When inhabited the island had schools, a hospital, a temple, shrine, a brothel, cinema, and a pachinko parlor. All things that are needed for a civilized life. However absolutely everything had to be shipped in from the mainland including all the fresh water.

 

The guides give plenty of explanations and information (in japanese only), and the island has applied for World Heritage status, but they would need to make an effort to make information available in English. Of course there is a part of Gunkanjima's history that the guides don't mention.

 

During the last years of the war the mine, like most mines in Japan at that time, was worked by slaves, mostly Korean and Chinese. The slaves were of course not paid, and the regulations for controlling the slaves called for "extreme camp security, inferior clothing, overcrowded sleeping quarters, primitive sanitation with no bathing facilities, limited medical care, and minimal amounts of the poorest quality food—which was to be withheld as necessary to ensure discipline." Obviously, the death rate was very high.

 

While some Japanese companies that used slave labor have apologised and paid compensation, Mitsubishi, probably the company that benefited most from slave labor, have absolutely refused to pay anything, and their continued denials make for a sad indictment of Japanese corporate greed, though the main thrust of their argument is that to admit to it would saddle Japan with "a mistaken burden of the soul" for hundreds of years. An excellent article on the subject is here

 To make the place a World heritage Site without dealing with this unsavory episode of its history would be a mistake, I think.

Shots of the island from the boat are in this earlier post

Battleship Island: The ultimate haikyo

Gunkanjima (Battleship island) is the nickname of Hashima, a very small uninhabited island about 15k from Nagasaki. Why that is its nickname should be obvious from this first photo.

 

Originally much smaller than its current size, at the end of the 19th Century coal was discovered under the island and Mitsubishi began mining. As rock was brought up from the tunnel digging it was used to expand the island and protect it with a big sea wall.

 

At the mine's peak in the late 1950's the island had a population of 5,300 people, which translates to a density of 216,264 people per square mile, certainly among the highest in the world.

 

In 1974 the mine closed and all the people moved off, and the buildings began to crumble. Incidentally, Japans first large concrete building, a 9 storey apartment block was built here.

 

There are regular tour boats from Nagasaki that circle the island, and since 2009 there have been tours that actually visit the island, though only a small section, fenced off, is currently accessible, but the plan is to extend the accessible sections. Photos from on the island tomorrow.

 

Fans of the 2012 James Bond movie "Skyfall" may think they recognize the island, and in fact it was used as a model for the lair of the villain Raoul Silva, but it was filmed on a lot at the studio in London.

Concrete Wabi Sabi Mountainsides

Concrete Wabi Sabi: Mountainsides

Any look at the aesthetics, or economics, of concrete in Japan would have to look at concreted mountainsides.

There is no doubting that Japanese mountainsides are, by and large, steep. That comes partially from Japan's "newness" geologically speaking, and that steepness causes problems that can be remedies by concrete.

But whether the truly staggering amounts of concreted mountainsides in Japan are truly necessary.... thats another thing.

Like many of the roads, bridges, tunnels, and tetrapods, their function is more to provide profits for concrete and construction companies. And jobs of course.

How Japanese tunnels are built

Our new tunnel will shorten our drive down the river to Gotsu by a little more than 200 meters. Being straight the tunnel will also be more fuel efficient to drive. A rough calculation says that with present traffic density the fuel savings will have paid for the tunnel in only a few million years. Incidentally, that is my village to the left of the tunnel.

This is the machine that actually drills its way through the mountain. I was expecting to see a huge machine almost as big as the tunnel.... watched too many movies I guess! These smaller drill splay out at any angle.

The next stage is to put up steel arches and then a series of steel beams are driven into the mountain radiating out from the tunnel. Then the tunnel is coated in a thin layer of concrete.

The purpose of the steel beams is to stop the tunnel collapsing under the weight of the mountain, represented here in this demonstration by steel nuts.

Next a thick, waterproof, plastic membrane covers the inside of the tunnel followed by a frame of reinforcing rebar,

The final stage involves this huge machine on rails which is a movable form. Its used to pour the final inner walls of the tunnel.

Tunnel under construction

We are getting a new tunnel!!!
This will make the drive to Gotsu at least 15 seconds quicker.
Well worth the billions of yen it's costing.

On Tuesday the construction company had an Open Day so that members of the public can view and inspect where all their tax money is going.

It was kind of cool, though I would rather have seen it with the men and equipment in operation.

Tomorrow I will post about the construction method.

About 300 meters in, only 363 more meters to go!

Japanese Tunnels

There are a lot of tunnels in Japan. Not surprising really considering how mountainous it is. The Japanese have become the worlds experts on tunnel construction and have built the longest transport tunnel in the world, the 54k train tunnel connecting Honshu with Hokkaido.

In the 1930's there was a plan to connect Tokyo with the rest of the empire with a high-speed train line that would pass under the sea from Japan to Korea. Incidentally, this is the origin of the Bullet Train.

The little train tunnel above is on our local train line and was dug by hand.

This pedestrian tunnel with hi-tech light show connects Tenmangu Shrine with the National Museum in Dazaifu, Fukuoka.

This somewhat older hand-dug tunnel connects the village of Kimach in Izumo with the sandstone quarry on the other side of the hill.

This long straight pedestrian tunnel goes under the sea and connects Kyushu with Honshu.

What japan also has is thousands and thousands of kilometres of road tunnels. Many of these continue to be built on little used roads and simply "straighten" existing roads that follow rivers.

Which brings me to the subject of tomorrows post.....

Concrete Wabi Sabi: Virgin tetrapods

Concrete Wabi Sabi: Virgin tetrapods

I like this photo because without any scale reference, one could be looking at something architectural, a stadium maybe.

But in fact, it's just a line of new tetrapods waiting to go in place to "protect" the riverbank. New concrete can have an aesthetic quality, in my opinion.

There are tetrapod production sites all over the place. Mostly they are made in situ, you just need the molds and a constant stream of cement trucks. I haven't been able to find the numbers, but I'm willing to bet that Japan leads the world in the number of cement trucks per capita.