Battleship Island and the Idea of Death

I was showing my wife the ruins of Detroit - so unusual, I said, to see a modern city utterly ruined. "No, there must be others," she said, "type 'abandoned city' into Google." I did. The first hits were, as you might expect, Pripyat (Chernobyl's home town). Then there was this interesting essay on urban planning, then a disturbing photo essay on Bhopal.

But then we stumbled on this photo essay of a place we'd never heard of, Battleship Island, off the west coast of Japan. Once a thriving coal mining community, it was abandoned when the coal ran out. The site includes pictures from 1974, when the island was alive, and then again in the 90's by which time it had taken on a notably Alaskan character.

The photographer had a bit of an epiphany when he did a series of photos of the seawall on Battleship Island. This commentary is both beautiful and educational. If nothing else, I think I now understand Waking Life a little better...