Gunkanjima – A Picture of the Past

During the Neo Summer Break, I spent a few days travelling in Nagasaki. The main destination I wanted to visit was Gunkanjima. A long time ago, I first discovered Gunkanjima online and I have always been interested in going there ever since. While I had been to Kyushu before, I never found the chance to go to Nagasaki, and so with this chance I finally decided to make the trip.

Gunkanjima is a nickname used for the island ‘Hashima’ because the island looks like a battleship. Hashima was set up as a coal mining facility a long time ago, and people lived on the island until around 1970 when the coal reserves dried up. At its peak, about 5300 people lived on the island. The island is small, so I think it is quite amazing so many people lived in a such a small space. While no one has lived on the island for a long time, it was opened as a tourist spot in 2009 and has since been a popular destination.

The main challenge of visiting Gunkanjima is that boat tours to the island often do not land on the island. This is because the waves around the island are often too high, and it is dangerous to land. When I visited, there had been heavy rain two days before, and so the waves were high. At the port the staff warned us that we may not be able to land on the island. Twenty minutes before we arrived at the island, the guides told us the waves were too high and that they would check one more time when we arrived. Luckily once we got there the height of the waves was safe enough to land.

I have always found old ruins, and remains of the past to be fascinating to explore. Gunkanjima has an air of sadness despite there also being many beautiful nature spots growing around the island. Sadly, there is only a small area of the island you can walk around. This is because the buildings on the island are unsafe and could fall down anytime. The guides told us that they could fall down in the next typhoon, but they do not know exactly when. We learned about the kinds of buildings they lived in, where children went to school, and where they would eat out. The island functioned like a very small city. Gunkanjima is a fascinating place to experience and a window into the past. I highly recommend you visit someday. Just be careful of getting seasick….