Care for the Future

Future of Ruins: Reclaiming Abandonment and Toxicity on Hashima Island

Carl Lavery, Deborah Dixon, Carina Fearnley and Mark Pendleton

Participants Summary

Prof Carl Lavery (Performance, Glasgow): Carl The ‘Future of Ruins: Reclaiming Abandonment researches on performance and its relationship and Toxicity on Hashima Island’ Pilot set out to with ecology and environment, and is particularly understand how a multi-modal mapping of a interested in ideas of affect, infection, specific site – Hashima island (端島), situated off atmosphere and breathing. the coast of City in , and once the most densely populated place on earth – might Prof Deborah Dixon (Geography, Glasgow): offer an alternative way of thinking about and Deborah has researched art/science representing an ecological future. collaborations in the UK, US, Switzerland and Australia, focusing on post-human life. Bringing together the disciplines of performance studies, geography, geology, and Japanese Dr Carina Fearnley (Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth): cultural studies, the primary objective of the Carina has participated in collaborative art project was to investigate, through a joint field science research into the sensuous experience of trip to the island, how ‘human time’ and ‘earth geohazards and risk. time’ overlap and necessitate an expanded Dr Mark Pendleton (East Asian Studies, Sheffield): notion of history. This meant that while the Mark is a cultural and social historian of modern specificity of Hashima’s location was always and contemporary Japan with research interests respected, we were interested in thinking beyond in memory and trauma. local and national boundaries. Instead we posited Hashima as a global site, an island that pointed Lee Hassall (Fine Arts, University of Worcester): towards the necessity of developing what we Lee is interested in the grotesque, parody, and called ‘a cosmopolitan eco-biography.’ notions of sanctified space. In keeping with recent research in the arts and Prof Brian Burke-Gaffney (Cultural History, humanities, there was an important practice- Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science) is a long based component to the project, and we were time resident of Nagasaki. He has published concerned to experiment with traditional modes extensively on the history of Nagasaki in both of data gathering, and with visual and textual English and Japanese. strategies for representing and communicating the findings of the fieldwork (http://www.futureofruins.org.uk/index.html). This has culminated in the creation of a cross- disciplinary performance piece, Return to Battleship Island: Future of Ruins, as well as a Cover image: Hashima in 1960, from Akui Yoshitaka (1985) Gunkanjima no kindai kenchikugun ni kansuru jisshôteki short film, topological maps and transects of the kenkyû [Site Research on the Modern Architectural Forms of island, a website and blog, and academic outputs Gunkanjima], Tokyo: Tokyo Denki Daigaku. in the form of articles and a book chapter.

Fearnley Carina by Photo The Field Site

Bought by in 1890, and mined for coal, office, a police station, a promenade, and a Hashima played a vital role in Japan’s 20th century swimming pool. industrial and political revolutions. By 1907, the The island was closed in 1974 as coal gave way to small rock reef had doubled in size as slag waste petroleum. There are, however, currently plans was levelled, ready for the construction of to transform the island into a UNESCO World dormitories. Within this 1.2 square mile area Heritage site and to exploit its industrial past, and people lived in and amongst concrete tower architectural remains, for tourism. If the bid is blocks, with food, water and fuel all shipped in by successful, Hashima will form part of an extensive Mitsubishi. To provide shelter from typhoons, a and controversial Japanese ‘post-industrial’ steep encircling wall was built giving the island heritage site. the appearance of a battleship riding the waves. A local newspaper reporter dubbed it ‘Battleship This silent, naked and useless site – layered by Island,’ or Gunkanjima (軍艦島). In the 1930s, trauma even as it was shorn of resources – has and through to the end of World War Two, become viral. In haikyo (廃墟) tourism, the Chinese and Korean forced labourers were sent landscapes that intone Japan’s industrial past to this labyrinth-like site. become sites for visceral adventure and a pensive melancholia in the form of urban exploration. By 1959 the island had reached a population of And Hashima, in similar vein to Detroit and over 5,000. Hashima was increasingly Chernobyl, has become iconic testimony to the domesticated with the construction of roof modern aspiration for progress, and the modern gardens, as well as a school and playground, a creation of ruins. hospital, cinema, shops, a pachinko parlour, post

ah Dixon ah PhotoDebor by Objectives of the Project

Working as a cross-disciplinary team our encounter with the toxic ruins of Hashima objectives were to: Island.  Investigate a new, creative methodology  Critically interrogate the past and present for cross-disciplinary fieldwork that would narratives of Hashima’s place in Japanese use performance-based methods to society, and in particular the rhetoric devise an eco-biography of a toxic, surrounding Hashima’s status as a symbol abandoned site. of Japan’s modernization in the 20th  Experiment with alternative forms of century. communicating historical, geographical  Argue for an alternative form of heritage and scientific information that would be experience that does not paradoxically affective, imaginative and accessible to a hide a violent, exploitative past, but rather wide constituency of possible users and seeks to keep the 'wound' of the past audiences. open in the hope of producing an  Reflect on the feasibility of expanding this expanded and complex relationship with Pilot project and performative 'natural' and 'human' history. methodology to other toxic and  Explore how a new ecological future might abandoned sites on the planet. emerge from a critical and creative

Hassall PhotoLee by Progress of the Project

Prior to the fieldtrip we applied for and secured Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science, who additional funding from the Japan Foundation, provided a lecture on the history of Hashima at Aberystwyth University and Glasgow University to the Thomas and Museum site. support the making of a film on the project. The Professor Burke-Gaffney also arranged the main artist Lee Hassall accompanied us to the island field trip to the island with the Nagasaki City Hall. and made two films while there. The first film Our project blog from this period (5minutes) is a short trailer documenting the field (http://futureofruins.wordpress.com) has to date trip and is posted on the project’s website. The received over 2,000 page views from 22 longer film (30 minutes) is shown as the first countries. We also initiated a twitter feed, installment of Return to Battleship Island. @AHRCFutureRuins, and built a substantial following. Over the course of three weeks in Japan we located and spent time in key archives (including On returning from the island we made and those located at the Nagasaki Prefectural performed a collaborative 80 minute Museum) and heritage/memorial sites (such as performance piece, Return to Battleship Island, The Nagasaki City Takashima Coal Museum, the and have been working on various academic Gunkanjima Museum, the Oka Masaharu articles and book projects. The performance Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum, and the piece weaves the findings of the researchers on Atomic Bomb Museum), visited the regional the project, and is designed as a portable, cultural offices of the UNESCO World Heritage Group in product that can be toured and performed by at Kagoshima, and made two trips to the island. We least two members of the team depending on were aided in our research by our collaborator in availability. Japan, Professor Brian Burke-Gaffney of the

Hassall PhotoLee by Initial Findings

The findings that emerged from the Pilot project human desires, was nevertheless committed to center around the following concepts and ideas of sustainability, environmental care, methodologies that sometimes combine and at hospitality, empathy, and intergenerational other times rub up against each other. justice – what Ghosh terms the claims of the ‘unborn’ (2012). To do this, we have figured a Futures future for Hashima that is always haunted by the violence of the past. The idea of an ecological future is fraught with difficulties and complexities, especially when Ruins human history is refracted through earth history (Serres, 1995a; Clark, 2011). The focus that As Tim Edensor (2005) has pointed out, ruins are geologists and earth scientists bring to geo-time often seen as cautionary or celebratory on or deep time has the capacity to produce a kind account of their dual temporality. That is, the of historical fatalism as we hurtle, mindlessly, sense in which they look forward and backwards towards ‘a world without us’ (Weisman, 2008; at the same time. Like Edensor, we sought to Chakrabaty, 2009). This is seen in various develop an alternative approach to ruins that ‘dystopian’ narratives that sometimes appear to would not fetishise or seek to conserve them, but celebrate the eradication of the human species on the contrary would express a posthumanist with a misanthropic joy. The eco-critic Gregg sensibility. Hashima is currently a part of Japan’s Garrard has recently called this type of cultural 2015 bid to UNESCO for World Heritage status. work ‘disanthropy’ (2012). As opposed to the This is premised on the need to preserve the artists and theorists of ‘disanthropy,’ we were buildings and associated landscapes of interested in imagining a future history of production associated with Japan’s Hashima Island that, while refusing to conform to modernization. In taking a critical approach to this heritage thinking, and similar preservationist rather investigates new critical and creative logics, we found the ruin to be an opportunity for methods for respecting them. reconfiguring our current attitudes to temporality and transience. For us, the ruins of Hashima are Eco-biography futural on account of their materiality; that is, the Our attempt to map the island, to tell its story, way in which they show a world in a constant showed the necessity of thinking in and through a state of autopoetic transformation and series of temporal lenses that were attentive to movement. the interpenetrative play of human history and Heritage/History earth history. An eco-biography is not simply about tracing human terraformations of the Our fieldtrip and archival research confirmed that earth; it is about accounting for the dynamic and Hashima is a contested historical terrain, both in agential force of the earth itself (see Clark, 2011). terms of a proposed industrial heritage site Equally, it is about extending the notion of history (Kobayashi et. al, 2008; Sakamoto and Gotō, outwards to take into account cosmic time in 2009) and a location of unresolved colonial such a way that human exceptionalism is trauma (Nagasaki Zainichi Kankokujin, 2011). This troubled, and that a new aesthetic relationship contestation around history and heritage relates with elemental forces is developed (see Grosz, to Hashima's centrality in three periods of rapid, 2008). national historical transformation - Meiji-era industrialisation/modernisation; colonial and Cosmopolitan ecologies decolonising processes pre- and post-1945; and In contrast to extant work in literary studies and late twentieth century economic decline. Rapid performance studies, where notions of localism change disturbs the notion of a settled past and and place-based authenticity have tended to requires, as Brumann and Cox have argued, dominate debates about ecologies (Heise, 2008; ‘aspects of the cultural environment [to be] Morton, 2013), our archival work found Hashima separated, reified and exhibited according to the within a nexus of global flows, economic aesthetic and political criteria for evaluating exchanges and energy distributions. Hashima, “heritage”’(2010: 3). then, performs a cosmopolitan ecology; it exists In Japan, dramatic changes in earlier historical in relation to other abandoned and ruined sites. periods led to an embrace of tradition against the onslaught of modernity. Similarly, the rapid Geo-Poetics decline of Japan’s economic dominance has Importantly for us, all of these de-centering prompted the separation, reification and moments provide a sense not only of the complex exhibition of declining industry and their ruins as inter-relations that continually exceed the heritage. Hashima’s ‘heritage’ value conflicts, enclosed geographies of the body, but also a however, with the memories (and history) of the sense of the geo-poetics manifest in the field. In island’s role in the Japanese imperial project. looking to the complex weathering processes Through this scoping project, we have sought to acting upon and with the sea wall, for example, find ways of bringing these conflicted pasts into we find that, as Myra Hird notes, ‘Bacteria are dialogue with each other so to allow an Gaia theory’s fundamental actants, and through alternative theory and practice of heritage to symbiosis and symbiogenesis, connect life and emerge. Importantly, such a project does not matter in biophysical and biosocial foreclose discussion of difficult histories, but entanglements’ (2010: 54). Clark’s concept of the geo is even more far-reaching; here, life evolves through a ‘succession of time-irreversible events clinometer into the field in an attempt to read which are in turn entwined in the no less- the lie of the rocks, concrete and all, on Hashima. irrevocable movements of the world around it, all A compass clinometer is used to record the dip the way up to the level of the universe’ (2005: and slip of layers of rock, sedimented and folded 165). over millennia, and to give some clue as to their condition of origin as, perhaps, a deep sea, a A geo-poetics also extends to the ‘world-ly’ shallow marshy coast line, as well as the tectonic expression in the umwelt of organisms, and their forces that compress and stretch these. By aesthetic expressivity. Umwelt, a term associated understanding the dip (the angle of tilt from the with the theories of biologist Jacob von Uexhull, horizontal) and the strike (the direction of the is sometimes translated into English as a ‘self- dip) and modelling these on a stereonet, we can centred world.’ It captures a sense of the also speculate as to future geomorphologies. importance of various facets of the environment for a particular organism – whether in the form of food, shelter, threat or navigation point – and the manner in which the interactions of organism and these environmental elements are thus laden with signification, a term more traditionally associated with uniquely human language systems. Hashima’s geo-poetics become, in effect, a ‘semiosphere’ (Kull, 1998), wherein the signifying role of environmental elements – waves, for example – are more than a matter of mass and energy. They are dense with cues and prompts constituting the umwelt of ourselves, and the assorted fauna and flora found on the island.

Affective topologies Hashima’s Stereonet. Produced by Carina Fearnley.

To tell the story of Hashima is not to stand aside On Hashima, the buildings cluster onto a central from the materiality of the island and to map it as rocky outcrop. None of the measured walls of the a distanced topographer; rather, it is to be buildings are at 90 degree angles. Rather, they lie immersed in an affective relationship with its between 84 and 89 degrees. They are slowly surfaces and topologies. This research has much unfurling away from the outcrop; and, they will in common with the posthuman thinking of tend to reach a tipping point together, and fall Bruno Latour (1993), Graham Harman (2007), against the encircling sea wall. Jane Bennett (2010), Elizabeth Grosz (2008), William Connelly (2011), and Rosa Braidotti Representation (2013). Like them, we were concerned to trouble the human centered approach to environment As we went about our research into how best to and to highlight our interdependency on and create and perform a cosmopolitan eco- mixity with the earth. biography, and a geo-poetics, problems to do with indigeneity invariably came to the fore. One technique we brought to bear to grasp What does it mean for instance to map a place something of the intricate and time dense where you don’t belong? What gives you the surficiality of Hashima was to take a compass right to speak on behalf of someone else, were interested in fashioning an evocative particularly the victims of Japanese imperial performance that would express an ‘ichnography’ violence on the island? How to avoid investing in (the background or atmosphere of the island) yet another exploitative and neo-imperialist rather than an ‘iconography’ (the stable and ‘mining’ of the earth’s natural and human recognisable image). Our aim was to give resources? While we can’t claim to have solved audiences the space to think and to create these issues, we were not interested in speaking connection in and through the construction of for or on behalf of the population of Hashima as ‘ecological images.’ such. Rather we attempted to place their stories into a larger narrative about the ecological Fieldwork violence inherent in modernity, imperialism, and An important part of the research was to find industrialisation in such a way that our own methods for engaging in creative fieldwork that representational strategies and methodological would allow the disciplinary affiliations of the motivations were constantly questioned. researchers to infect each other. This was done Creative Methods by concentrating on the notion of performance, and in demonstrating how disciplinary specific The project invites further reflection on how research is carried out in the field itself. This creative methods and practices can be utilised in sharing of the methodologies produced a ‘contact collaborative cross-disciplinary research. These zone’ where team members experienced issues are crucial to investigate since the research different practices that ‘decentered them.’ In the impact of the artwork does not reside, we process, a generative space was opened up for believe, in simply seeing itself as a conduit or arts/science collaboration to take place and to instrument for conveying information. Rather the inform the subsequent work that team members research questions of the project are best served produced. This work has formed a by thinking formally, that is to say, by finding methodological prototype for the subsequent methods for evoking an imaginative engagement grant bids that have been submitted from the with cross-disciplinary ideas and concepts. To use project to the AHRC. the language of Michel Serres (1995b: 19-21), we

Fearnley PhotoCarina by

Hassall PhotoLee by Outputs

Performances and Lectures  ‘Hashima 4,’ Department of Geography, Exeter University, May 2013. To date, we have undertaken 11 performances  ‘Hashima 5,’ Monsters and the Monstrous and lectures, each of which has extended into a Conference, Prague, May 2013. dialogue with diverse audiences on the ‘work’ of  ‘Hashima 6,’ Post-Traumatic Landscapes the text presented, and mediums deployed. Conference, Sheffield, May 2013. While the presentations have drawn on a  ‘Hashima 7, ‘East Asian Societies in collective pool of shared research, they adopt a Transition: Challenges and Connections, different focus depending on the nature of the Nottingham, September 2013. conference and the disciplinary affiliation of the  ‘Return to Battleship Island,’ Foundry speaker(s). Studio Theatre, Film and Television Responses to these performances can be found Seminar Series, Aberystwyth, October 2013. at: http://www.futureofruins.org.uk/responses.html  'Return to Battleship Island,' Radical Space  ‘Hashima 1,’ Performing Monstrosity in Conference, Keynote, University of East the City, Keynote, Queen Mary University, London, Docklands, October 2013. London, September 2012.  ‘Came Dancing Cross the Water: The  ‘Hashima 2,’ Association for Asian Studies Ecological Image in Battleship Island’, Conference, San Diego, March 2013. Performing Ecologies Conference, Central  ‘Hashima 3,’ Association of American School of Speech and Drama, London, Geographers, Los Angeles, April 2013. October 2013.  ‘Hashima - History & Heritage,’ University articles and chapters on dark tourism, wicked of Edinburgh Asian Studies seminar series, landscapes and site ontologies. November 2013. Maps We have also been invited to undertake the following: We produced three topological maps – ‘Up,’ ‘Fall’ and ‘Wall’ – and a transect of part of the island.  ‘Return to Battleship Island,’ Millennium Centre, Cardiff, December 2013. Grants  ‘Rethinking Battleship Island,’ Japan Foundation, London, December 2013. Building on insights drawn from this Pilot we have  ‘Return to Battleship Island – submitted the following: Performance,’ Gas Gallery, Park Avenue,  ‘Empire’s Islands: The Remaking of Aberystwyth, December 2013. Imperial Time,’ AHRC care for the Future In 2014, we will present our research at seminar Large Grants scheme. series at the University of Warwick, University of This proposal extends key conceptual and Manchester and University of methodological themes from the pilot project Glasgow, and also at the 'Big Ruins Conference' at and seeks to use that as a model or prototype for the University of Manchester. investigating other islands that were caught in Academic Texts the industrialising mesh of global modernity.  ‘The Field of Art-Science,’ AHRC’s To date, we have produced 3 texts: Collaborative Skills Development Scheme.  ‘Recuperating the Monstrous: Matter and  Two submission to the AHRC’s February Entropy on Hashima Island,’ in the edited 2014 Early Career Researcher Workshop. volume Monstrous Geographies, Inter- Disciplinary press, Oxford. Cross-Disciplinary Networks  ‘The Baroque Melancholy of Hashima,’ As well as experimenting with cross-disciplinary accepted for Environment and Planning A. fieldwork within the parameters of our own  ‘Postcards from Hashima,’ accepted for grant, we have sought to create relationships the Monsters and the Monstrous Journal. with researchers from different fields and to elicit We are currently preparing three articles: responses from a wide range of audiences.

 ‘The Time That Is Hashima,’ for Cultural Following our presentation of ‘Return to Geographies. Battleship Island’ at Radical Space Conference in October 2013, we have been invited by Dr Cecilia  ‘Sakamoto’s Route: Material Memories Sosa at the University of East London to be part and the Work of Interruption,’ for of the British Academy International Partnership Memory Studies. and Mobility Grant scheme looking at  ‘A Saturnine Ecology: The Monstrous ‘Commemoration, New Audiences and Spaces of Touch of Hashima,’ for Cultural Politics. Memory in Latin America’s Southern Cone: Trans- We have also entered into discussion with the cultural Dialogues in the Wake of Loss.’ In March publisher Black Dog for a cross-disciplinary 2014, we will present our work in Buenos Aires ‘mapping’ book on Hashima. We anticipate future and use our findings to run a series workshops exploring the relationship between ruins, memory and trauma. We will also give a keynote Battleship Island’ at the Millennium Centre, on ruins and ecological futures at the University Cardiff, for instance, is part of a 2 day symposium of East London, in June 2014. funded by an AHRC network grant led by Professor Karen Henwood exploring issues to do In line with the stated objectives of the ‘Care for with place, sustainability and futures. the Future Scheme’ we have also been successful in forging links with other researchers connected to the AHRC ‘Connected Communities’

Programme. The presentation of ‘Return to

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