A deserted island and a city where nature takes its toll. Gunkanjima - the nickname of the Japanese island of Hasim - literally means "cruiser", so he is called for resemblance to a warship.
In 1810, deposits of coal were discovered here, and mining enterprises were built.
In the 30-ies of the XX century, military factories appeared. On the fragment of a rock about half a kilometer long, life boiled: multistoried apartment houses, a hospital, a school and other infrastructure were built.
The mines went deep into the earth for 500-600 m. For 50 years the island was one of the most densely populated places on Earth - 5259 people per 1 km² (population density in the residential area reached a crazy number of 139 100 people per 1 km²).
But by 1974, instead of coal, oil had come, the mines had been closed, people had left the island. The abandoned buildings are slowly being destroyed.
Visiting the island was banned (officially - to protect it from the "black diggers") - at least until 2009, when the first tourist boats were able to swim to its shores.
True, the participants of the tours are forbidden to climb deep into the island, and in fact there is all the most interesting for lovers of ruins and ruins: Crossroads of saline rains (here, where sea waves did not reach, residents could wait out the storm and typhoons).
The ladder to hell (it leads to the Seppukuji temple, the ascent to the stairs will exhaust you to quite serious pains in the legs) or Block-65 is a nine-storey residential building for 317 apartments (with an appalling population density, the area of the apartments was only 10 m2).
Photographer Michael Gakuran was able to get into the interior of the island and made a series of impressive photographs. Here is what he writes about his impressions: "Block 65 is a huge concrete deformity, inside - rotten tatami and broken doors, a forgotten matrioshka doll, an old mannequin, rusted medical equipment ... trees grow between the walls - nature slowly but steadily takes its toll."
It remains to add that in 2015 Hasima Island was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as "an object of the Meiji period industrial revolution: metallurgy, shipbuilding and the coal industry".
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