excursion to the ghost island of Hashima, a former mining town that became the setting for a James Bond film

Located off Nagasaki (Japan), Hashima is an abandoned island. For James Bond in Skyfall, it looks like a fortress seen from the sea. From the inside, it is a dilapidated ghost town. 480 meters long and 160 meters wide, the small island was emptied of its inhabitants 48 years ago. Today, tourists come to visit it by boat. Minoru Kinoshita grew up there until he was 13 years old. “It was fun living here as a kid. It felt like the whole island was one big family“, he confides.

An old mining town

Owned by the Mitsubishi company at the end of the 19th century, the island was then a mining town. High-quality coal is mined there at a depth of 1,000 m. In the late 1950s, it was the most densely populated place on the planet, with 5,300 people living on just over six hectares. Then oil prevailed over coal, and from 1974 the island was abandoned. Vestige of the industrialization of Japan, the ironclad island, as the Japanese call it, is now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.