Nagasaki Prefecture · Japan
Gunkanjima: The Abandoned Island That Looks Like a Warship
Once the most densely populated place on Earth, Hashima Island's concrete tower blocks now stand crumbling and empty, ringed by a seawall that gave it the nickname Battleship Island.
A little more than nine miles off the coast of Nagasaki sits a tiny island shaped, from a distance, like a battleship steaming through the East China Sea. Hashima, nicknamed Gunkanjima or Battleship Island, was once one of the most crowded places on the planet, home to over 5,000 coal miners and their families crammed onto a plot of land barely the size of a few city blocks. Concrete apartment towers, Japan's first, rose to shelter the workforce that fed Mitsubishi's undersea coal seams during the country's industrial boom. When petroleum replaced coal in the 1970s, the mine shut and the island was evacuated within months, leaving furniture, schoolbooks, and machinery to decay under salt spray and typhoons. Today it stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a haunting monument to boom and bust.
From Barren Reef to Coal Powerhouse
Coal was discovered on Hashima in 1810, but serious mining did not begin until Mitsubishi purchased the island in 1890. Undersea shafts eventually plunged more than 600 meters below the seabed, extracting high-quality coal that fueled Japan's rapid industrialization and, later, its wartime steel production.
To house the growing workforce, Mitsubishi expanded the island's footprint through land reclamation, ringing it with a thick sea wall to withstand typhoons. Between 1916 and the early 1970s, the company built increasingly tall concrete apartment blocks, including Japan's very first large reinforced-concrete building, Block 30, completed in 1916. By the 1950s Hashima had become the most densely populated place on Earth, with a peak population near 5,300 crammed into 6.3 hectares.
A Self-Contained World
Life on Hashima was claustrophobic but surprisingly complete. The island had a school, hospital, cinema, pachinko parlor, communal baths, rooftop gardens, and shops connecting to the mainland by boat, since almost no natural soil existed for growing food. Apartments were tiny, often just one room for an entire family, and stairwells and walkways doubled as children's playgrounds since there was no open ground.
The island's history carries a darker chapter as well: during World War II, Korean and Chinese laborers were conscripted to work in the mines under brutal conditions, a legacy that remains a point of historical dispute between Japan and its neighbors, especially after Hashima's 2015 UNESCO inscription.
Sudden Abandonment
As Japan pivoted from coal to petroleum in the 1960s and 70s, Hashima's mine became unprofitable. Mitsubishi announced closure in 1974, and the remaining residents left within months, some structures reportedly abandoned mid-meal. For nearly three decades the island sat sealed off, its buildings battered by sun, salt, and storms, an eerie time capsule frozen at the moment of departure.
Access was forbidden until 2009, when the local government reopened part of the island to tourism with reinforced walkways for safety.
Ruin Tourism and Pop Culture Fame
Hashima was inscribed as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution' in 2015, cementing its status as both an engineering marvel and a contested historical site. Its crumbling silhouette also caught Hollywood's eye, serving as visual inspiration for the villain's lair in the James Bond film Skyfall.
Today, boat tours from Nagasaki allow visitors to walk a narrow section of the island, viewing collapsing apartment blocks and the skeletal remains of what was once a thriving, self-sufficient mining town, now reclaimed slowly by wind and wave.
Fun facts
- At its peak in 1959, Hashima housed roughly 5,300 people on just 6.3 hectares, one of the highest population densities ever recorded.
- Block 30, built in 1916, is considered Japan's oldest surviving large reinforced-concrete apartment building.
- The island's silhouette, ringed by a high sea wall, inspired its nickname Gunkanjima, meaning Battleship Island.
- It was completely evacuated within months of the coal mine's 1974 closure and stood sealed off to visitors until 2009.
- The island appeared as a decaying villain lair in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.
Gallery
Sources
Other interesting places
View all →
Featured lists
View all lists →
Compare cities, side by side
Choose any 2 cities →
Text on this page is original Terralocate editorial. Background facts compiled from the public sources listed above. Images via Wikimedia Commons under their respective licenses (typically CC BY-SA or public domain).