Introduction
This book project arose from the collaboration between a sociologist who worked on the coal mining industry in Japan, a developmental economist, and an area studies specialist on Japan. These scholars combined their expertise to contribute to a multidisciplinary volume that encompasses a chronological glimpse of Japanese coal mines in three phases. Having three phases provides a neat organization of contents and materials derived from fieldwork as well as from secondary resources’ interpretive work. Chronically, the volume also weaves a coherent narrative of coal industrial development through different ages experiencing different environmental conditions and externalities, so comparisons and contrasts can be highlighted temporally when the materials are segmented chronologically.
The first phase consists of the transitional period from late pre-modernity to modernity, written by a veteran economist Yoshihisa Godo. It is a historical survey that stretches from the early modern period to the early post-war decades. The second chronological phase written by sociologist Naoko Shimazaki focuses on the post-war era from where chapter contributor Godo left off. This period may be considered the “golden era” of post-war coal mining history during Japan’s transition from coal to oil energy. Rising wages, labour strikes, mine depletion, societal rejection of coal pollution, and dangerous working conditions were the impetuses for the beginning of the slow decline of the coal industry that lasted right up to the early twenty-first century. The third phase covered in this writing is situated in the contemporary era, where Tai Wei Lim (an area studies specialist focusing on Northeast Asia, particularly Japan and China) analyses current uses of former coal mining areas for gentrification, tourism, retail activities, and heritage preservation. He utilized a combination of observation studies, interpretation of secondary textual sources, fieldwork based on visual analysis, and unstructured conversations with residents and stakeholders of those mines. For a more macro perspective complementing the study on Japan’s domestic coal industry in the previous chapter, Tai Wei Lim also has a subsequent chapter on the contemporary regional developments of the coal mining industry in Northeast Asia. Finally, Tai Wei Lim wraps up the volume with a study of the cultural aspects of coal mine development in Japan through an analysis of aesthetics, gender perspectives, literary arts, and culture.
Chapterization and Introduction of Contents
The following section introduces the volume chapters with some details. Godo’s historical chapter lays the foundation for understanding the early development of the coal mining industry in this volume, particularly in terms of its association with agriculture and other natural resources or what Godo calls “primary industries.” His chapter explains how the early modern coal mining industry got access to a large pool of labour generated by excess manpower from a declining agricultural sector which faced oversupply. Godo’s chapter also informs readers about the growing demand for coal fuel as Japan entered a heavy industrialization phase in its economic development. This phase was interrupted by the Pacific War but quickly resumed its post-war trajectory. Godo’s extensive use of Japanese-language sources provides a value-added Japanese perspective of the country’s industrialization process and the role of coal mining industries. In narrating the emergence of Japan’s coal industry, Godo has also highlighted the transition of agricultural activities to industrialization, and the chapter is also a micro-level account of the transformation of autonomously created laissez-faire work schedules (“peasant time”) to highly disciplined rationalized mass production (later epitomized by Taylorism).
The next stage of post-war evolution in the coal mining industry (including its decline) is detailed by Shimazaki. Shimazaki’s chapter is centred on the Mitsui Miike Coal Mine. There are at least three points of significance in studying this coal mine. First, it was the largest coal mine in Japan, and it produced the highest quality coal. Therefore, the government also tried to make the coal mine the most sustainable in terms of extraction. Because of its size, the Miike Coal Mine was economically important and politically influential. Because of its political significance, labour relations and coal strikes in Miike also garnered the most attention, particularly from the media. In 1963, the worst industrial incident involving a coal mine occurred in Miike. All these features in Miike attracted academic research interest.
Second, Miike’s closure in 1997 was particularly significant. While Kushiro and Ikeshima coal mines were chronologically the last mines to close down in Japan, Miike’s closure was on a far greater scale. The third significance of Shimazaki’s chapter is its contribution to existing publications in this field, as there is no English-language academic writing at the moment that studies Miike’s closure in detail and embedded within a conceptual/theoretical framework. Shimazaki’s hypothesis is that, from a comparative perspective, there are similarities to the industrial layoffs found in other heavy industries involving blue-collared industrial workers. These common features amongst heavy industries will be examined in Shimazaki’s chapter.
Lim’s chapter utilizes observation studies to go on-site to observe how gentrified coal mining spaces are developed in Hokkaido’s coal mining regions of historical importance. Chronologically, Lim’s story takes place after the mine closures studied by Shimazaki’s chapter. The bulk of the Lim’s fieldwork in West Hokkaido focuses on Yubari and Mikasa. Unused coal mines were mothballed and made defunct. To make these former coal mines environmentally green and friendly, a number of stakeholders are coming up with ways to make their environments conducive for tourism and local community livelihoods, ensuring a clean environment and sustainable development. The bulk of the author’s fieldwork in East Hokkaido is focused on Kushiro. The Kushiro Coal Mine operated by the KCM firm was the first Japanese coal mine facility that Lim visited which is still operational. This was the smaller-scale contemporary version of the coal mining company with limited coal production output after the coal mine closed. Therefore, it was perhaps the most important case study since Lim was able to visualize workers at work in the mine and its daily operations.
Methodology
The volume’s methodological approaches can be divided into three major directions. First, the volume’s authors used observation studies to go on-site to observe how gentrified coal mining spaces are used. In the process, the authors had conversations with individuals who were affected by coal mine closure or residents of these towns who were displaced and/or economically affected by the decline of this industry. In the museums, the authors’ observations also recorded the artefacts on display using digital images to curate memories of the past and serve as educational tools for community residents. The authors visited some of these mines to experience life as a coal miner in order to adopt a standpoint view and apply experiential learning related to working in the coal mine. Second, the authors relied on collection of textual documents (both primary and secondary) to reconstruct a clearer picture of the former coal mining towns before and after closure. These textual and visual documents were useful to corroborate our on-site observations. They provided some empirical and quantitative data useful for the volume. Secondary resources were also useful for interpretive work. Blueprints and town plans also provided a clearer spatial layout of the former coal mining facilities in the places that were visited by the authors.
Third, the authors also selectively carried out conversations with users of gentrified green spaces, farmers in former coal mining towns, and local museum curators to understand their opinions of post-closure changes. These interviews are semi-structured, loose, and qualitative rather than quantitative and designed with open questions that give interviewees ample space to articulate their views. Some of the sites visited by the authors for this volume included Bibai, Kushiro, Asahikawa or Yubari Coal Mining Museums, and so on. The authors walked on cycling tracks and a green rail corridor built on abandoned railway tracks in Kushiro, and so on. In order to have a standpoint perspective of daily lives in the former coal mine towns, the authors stayed in accommodations near agricultural areas in a former coal mining town in Hokkaido. The authors also visited the Yubari film festival site and farming area and scoured local book shops, archives, and libraries in former coal mining towns in Hokkaido, like Bibai, Kushiro, Asahikawa, or/and Yubari.
Literature Review
Existing writings on the mentioned mines within the context of modernization, mine closures, and gentrification are mostly found in the form of policy papers instead of an edited volume. Policy reports and academic studies that date back to the 1960s were also reviewed in order to understand the subject matter from a temporal standpoint perspective drawn from that historical period; for example, Benjamin Martin’s article detailed the social impact of an early mine closure from the perspective of the early 1960s. Another classic article “Some Problems of Unemployed Laborers in Coal Mining Industry” by Naoki Kusuhara details the first post-war attempt to address post-closure issues such as re-employment of retrenched workers. It is important to note that these are short articles rather than a consolidated coherent edited volume structured around a central theme. The most important monographic work in the English language is Suzanne Cutler’s Managing Decline: Japan’s Coal Industry Restructuring and Community Response, mainly written from a sociological/anthropological point of view and with information dated back to the 1999. This writing’s value-add to Cutler’s volume is bringing the materials up to date and also adopting a multidisciplinary perspective.
In Tai Wei Lim’s previous publication (Energy Transitions in Japan and China: Mine Closures, Rail Developments, and Energy Narratives), Lim studied the research questions of why coal mines declined in importance in the post-war years. In that publication, Lim focused mainly on mines found in southern Japan, particularly in Kyushu like Omuta, Chikuhō, and other mines that have since closed when Japan transitioned to the use of oil starting from the 1960s. In the course of his previous research, he came across information related to the gentrification of these former mines and discovered how they have been transformed into environmentally friendly towns with smaller populations. The former mine sites have also been converted into playgrounds, skating parks, museums, and other educational facilities.
Up till that point of time, publications on the gentrification of former coal mines were limited to Suzanne Cutler’s publication Managing Decline: Japan’s Coal Industry Restructuring and Community Response as the major seminal work in this area. This volume is a continuation of Lim’s previous work on former coal mines in Japan. There are some distinguishing features of this volume from previous works. In Lim’s previous volume, he mainly worked on coal mines in southern Japan’s island of Kyushu. In this grant, he carried out fieldwork with his Japanese colleagues in the sites of northern coal mines in Hokkaido like Kushiro, Yubari, and Bibai. Almost all existing writings of recent vintage focused mainly on physical assets when considering gentrification. They did not look into intangible cultural artefacts and textual or graphical materials when considering the gentrification process.
Contribution to Existing Literature
The volume value-adds to existing writings through the use of a multidisciplinary approach in studying the complexities of gentrification processes. The contributors’ expertise can better indicate how the gentrification process takes on tangible and intangible dimensions with concrete policies directly affecting the lives of workers and their communities’ livelihoods as well as intangible recollection of memories for educational purposes and to develop a local community identity. The careful archiving of memories helps to bring the town’s coal industrial decline to a final closure and transition the town to a new developmental phase while preserving the character and historical consciousness of its denizens. Sociological analyses combined with textual interpretations of retrenched coal miners’ resettlement make this project rather unique and informative for comprehensive scholarly study as compared to a single-disciplinary approach.
Unlike other existing literatures, this writing includes viewpoints from a contemporary lens. It adopts contemporary ideas and applications of energy use, including the use of renewable energies in former coal mining areas to power their infrastructure and industries. In the same way, existing works on Japanese coal mine closure do not cover the aftermath of the closure. Lim examines how the former coal mining town in Hokkaido started transitioning to cleaner sources of fuels and explains how the local communities became conscious of keeping the environment clean so that service and agricultural industries that require clean and pristine environments to attract tourism and grow high-quality farm products can emerge in former coal mining areas. In this aspect, Yubari and its high-quality melon cultivation is a good example. In terms of sources, Japan-based scholars Godo and Shimazaki and their extensive use of Japanese-language sources provide a standpoint view to the narrative of Japan’s industrial history from the beginning of modernization (Meiji Restoration) to post-war restructuring resulting in the closure of coal mines, bringing an end to one of the most important heavy industries in Japan. Because Japan is the first modernizing economy in East Asia, its story carries significance and is important to the narrative of early modernization in East Asia regionally.
Lim also examines how a strong sense of nostalgia for lost green spaces in the form of abandoned railway tracks of Kushiro, Bibai, and Asahikawa in Hokkaido have seen these spaces reused as cycling tracks for outdoor enthusiasts or designated green corridors for walkers, hikers, and trekkers. There is also a cultural perspective to the gentrification of former coal mining areas. The volume studies the artistic transformation and gentrification process of former coal mining industrial spaces in Bibai into cutting-edge post-modernist sculpture parks like the Arte Piazza Bibai Kan Yasuda Sculpture Park, which features the works of the internationally acclaimed sculptor Kan Yasuda. Such renewal and gentrified use of spaces necessitates the need for a more in-depth understanding of usage of former coal mining spaces, green environmental policies, and tapping on renewable energy options to clean up the towns and transition these spaces to service tourism and/or high value-added agricultural economy. While the reasons behind coal mine closures and the re-employment measures to cope with its impacts are studied comprehensively in Shimazaki’s works, analysing the aftermath of the closure and restoration of the community in those areas are de-privileged in current discussions/existing volumes. This writing addresses this area.
Lim’s coal mine gentrification chapter is followed by a broader regional view of the coal industry in Northeast Asia. This chapter situates the discussion of the first three chapters in the context of regional developments in the coal industry. Taken as a whole, it i...