Read the memory of coal mines and steelworks in aerial photographs

Published: August 11, 2026 / About 17 min read

Towns that dug out coal and towns that make iron tend to be lumped together on the map as the same kind of industrial city. But if you step through aerial photographs era by era, you can see that the two changed in completely different ways. An industry that digs ends when the underground resource runs out, and all that remains above ground are the traces of facilities and rows of housing. An industry that makes things keeps running regardless of resources, as long as it can secure a place where raw materials can be brought in by ship.

This article lines up six locations: Omuta (Former Mitsui Miike Coal Mine) and Iwaki-Yumoto (Former Joban Coalfield) as coal towns, and Kamaishi Station Area (Former Steelworks), Higashida (Yawata Steel Works Higashida District), Kashima Coastal Industrial Zone, and Mizushima Waterfront (Kurashiki) as iron towns. If you look at both the towns where the fire went out and the towns where it still burns, the difference in the shapes that an industry leaves on the land becomes clear.

The outlines that coal and iron leave

The site of a coal mine appears in aerial photographs as three elements: the bota-yama, heaps piled up from the rock that was dug out; the facilities that sort the coal and the coal storage yards; and the spur lines that run out from them. You should not overlook how the housing appears either: lots where buildings of the same shape and facing the same direction form rows as if drawn with a ruler often appear around the pit mouths and on the flat parts of slopes. This is housing that the company built for its workers, and its texture is clearly different from an ordinary townscape where detached houses increase little by little.

The site of iron is on a larger scale. Such a site has quays and jetties where raw materials are unloaded, yards where coal and iron ore are piled in the open, and dense masses of blast furnaces and chimneys, while very long buildings where products are rolled line up diagonally in many rows. Between the buildings, freight sidings are bundled in many layers, which can be read in the photographs as a gathering of thin lines. The open-air yards reflect almost no light, so they lie across the frame as bands one step darker than their surroundings.

Both industries share one feature: they use land on a much larger scale. Coal mines and steelworks use land together in units of tens of hectares, where housing would divide it in units of 100 square meters. That is why the change when the industry withdraws is also large in scale, and it looks as if a whole block has been swapped out.

The number of photograph eras available differs among the six locations. Kamaishi has only one past era, 1974-78, so the comparison is limited to two photographs, that one and today's. Kashima, on the contrary, has four eras from 1961-69 to 1984-86, so you can follow in stages the fields along the sandy beach in the middle of turning into a steelworks. The elevation values also differ a great deal among the six locations: Kamaishi, where the mountains press close to the sea, and Mizushima, where land reclaimed by drainage (polder) continues, are both waterfront industrial areas, yet the way their land was formed is the exact opposite.

After the digging towns wound down

The 1961-69 photograph of Omuta is surprising for how complete it is as a town. In the center of the frame a main road and a railway cross, and around them the town, divided by narrow straight streets, is packed with buildings. At the upper left there is a factory site where long buildings and chimneys are lined up in good order, and in front of it a canal crosses and runs out to a boat basin at the river mouth. At the left edge a wide, whitish area of bare ground and dark water spreads out, and along the foot of the low hill on the right a long, narrow site that looks like spur lines and large buildings continue. A circular stadium appears in the lower part, and south of the town, lots where buildings of the same shape form rows can be seen together.

If you lay the photograph as of 2026 over it, the framework of streets and waterways has hardly moved. The change is in what fills the surfaces. The factory at the upper left has been renewed with bluish roofs, and the linear site that ran along the hill on the right has been replaced by large buildings with wide parking lots. The small lots at the lower left have become an orderly residential area and a school sports ground, and across the whole town the green of the trees has clearly become deeper. The stadium and the gymnasium remain in the same positions, and if you go back and forth between the photographs, you can use them as markers for lining up positions.

The Mitsui Miike Coal Mine ended coal mining in March 1997. Remains such as the Miyanohara Pit were registered as World Cultural Heritage in 2015 as components of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, and the facilities for digging switched to being objects of tourism and learning. Because the land is along the Ariake Sea, the elevation is low: 3.7 m at the center, dropping to 2.2 m at the measuring point on the north side. For what preparations are needed on low land, the information published on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is a starting point.

The 1961-69 photograph of Iwaki-Yumoto is set in terrain completely different from Omuta. The tracks and the townscape run long and narrow along a valley cut deep into the mountains, and a river flows along the valley floor. The hot spring town in the center is dense and includes large white buildings, and on the flat parts of the slopes away from it, housing groups with buildings of the same shape lined up in rows appear together in three or more places. White patches of bare ground appear here and there on the mountainsides, and from the lower right to the lower part, terraced fields show regular ridges. On the left there is also a dark water surface that looks like a reservoir.

If you look at the photograph as of 2026 for the same view, the mountains are covered all over in deep green, and no white bare ground can be found. The townscape, the tracks, and the station along the valley keep their positions. At the upper right a sports park appears, with white-roofed stands, a blue track, and a green field, and from the lower left to the lower part the orderly blocks of a danchi (housing complex) spread out. Right of center there are large buildings and parking lots, and the regular rows of the housing groups that had been lined up on the slopes remain nowhere.

Coal mining in the Joban Coalfield ended by the 1970s, but this land had another resource: hot water welling up inside the pits. In 1966 the Joban Hawaiian Center opened, and as the later Spa Resort Hawaiians it became a pillar of tourism. It was a shift from a town that carried coal out to a town that draws people in, in which the hot water became the town's pillar. The elevation is 11.3 m around the station and reaches 28.8 m at the measuring point on the west side, and the terrain of a town fitted into a valley shows in the numbers too.

Towns where the fire of iron went out and towns where it continues

Kamaishi is known as the place where modern ironmaking in Japan began. The only past aerial photograph available is from one era, 1974-78, so this location takes the form of comparing two photographs, that one and today's. If you line up the elevation values, the narrowness of the land becomes clear. Around the station it is 6.7 m, with 5.1 m on the south side, 4.1 m on the east side, and 4.2 m on the west side, close to sea level, while only the measuring point on the north side jumps to 43 m. In this terrain the station, the steelworks, and the town are squeezed into the bottom of a valley where the mountains press right to the sea's edge. The blast furnace was shut down in 1989, and even after the central facility for making iron stopped, production related to iron continued on this land.

Higashida is the area where the steelworks at Yawata first had a blast furnace. In the 1945-50 photograph about the upper third is gray where tiles are missing, and the rest is also hazy white all over. You can make out the streets and dark lots of the town faintly showing on the left, and a dense settlement clinging to the slope at the right edge with roads along the valley. In this era the limit of the resolution shows directly in the frame, so instead of following details, it is better used to confirm that "the town was already in this position".

If you switch to 1961-69, most of the frame becomes the steelworks. A wide site, buildings, and tracks occupy the upper left; a dark water surface that comes in from Dokai Bay, with quays and jetties, lies in the center; and very long factory buildings line up diagonally in many rows in the lower center. Around the buildings, freight sidings are bundled in many layers and can be read as a gathering of thin lines. Near the center, hazy white smoke has been caught in the picture, which shows that the photograph was taken of a site in operation. The right side is dense housing and wooded hills, the lower part is town, and at the lower right a park with curving paths can also be seen.

In the photograph as of 2026, the character of the same place has swapped. From the upper left to the left a group of blue-roofed factories remains, and ships are moored at the quays of the waterway that runs diagonally through the center. The change is in the area from the center to the south side, where a large white building with a multi-story parking garage, wide parking lots, and orderly blocks and green space spread out. The dense housing and the green of the hills on the right keep their positions, and an elevated expressway and a junction have been added in the lower part. In this area the state-run Yawata Steel Works began operating in 1901; an amusement park that opened in 1990 closed at the end of 2017, and on its site a district including a museum and large commercial facilities was formed. Part of the site that made iron has been replaced by a surface that gathers visitors.

Kashima is a story in the opposite direction. In the 1961-69 photograph not a single industrial facility appears. At the upper right there are a sandy beach and white waves, along the coast a long, narrow line of trees and rows of sand barriers, and inland small fields divided into strips and grids spread out all over, with small settlements and dirt roads scattered among them. The elevation is 8.1 m at the center, and the measuring points to the north, south, east, and west also stay within the range from 8.0 m to 8.2 m, so the numbers show that it is a flat surface with almost no relief.

If you step to 1974-78 for the same view, the steelworks is already there. The photograph shows a group of very long factory buildings with bluish roofs at the upper left, a band of rows of buildings and reddish-brown raw material yards in the lower center, a straight dug-in channel with quays and jetties right of center, a sandy beach and white graded land at the upper right, and a group of circular tanks at the lower right. Ships float on the water. The comparison of the two photographs shows that the flat land behind the sandy beach was reorganized into an industrial zone at a speed of just over 10 years from fields to blast furnaces. Because the color tone changes at the seams between tiles, you can also tell that the shooting dates are not uniform within the frame.

In the 1979-83 photograph a mass of blast furnaces, chimneys, and factory buildings occupies the center diagonally, and on the southeast side black raw material yards lie as bands of open-air piles. In the 1984-86 photograph that mass becomes even more crowded, and reddish-brown yards and rows of long, narrow buildings with orange roofs are added at the lower left, and rows of very long factory buildings with white and gray roofs at the upper left. The dug-in channel on the right appears deep blue, with small boats at the quays and jetties and several ships leaving wakes on the water. Flat graded land with a breakwater and circular tanks lies at the upper right, and a group of large tanks stands in rows at the lower right. In the photograph as of 2026, a red cargo ship is moored at the quay, wakes remain in the dug-in channel, and the blast furnaces and raw material yards keep the look of operation, unchanged.

Mizushima, too, is a postwar waterfront industrial area. In the 1961-69 photograph the wide water surface of a river runs vertically down the right part of the frame, with sandbars along the banks, rows of stakes dotted across the water, and small boats. The right edge on the far bank is small farmland in strips. From the center to the left, a town divided by straight streets and factory sites are mixed together, and at the lower left long buildings are lined up in many rows. At the left edge the dark water of ponds and wetlands remains, and at the bottom edge circles of tanks have already appeared. As of 2026, the town has retreated to a band at the top, and rows of factory roofs and groups of circular tanks fill most of the frame. The water surface on the right has been made into a port edged with quays, and moored ships appear. The center elevation is 2.8 m, the lowest of the six locations, and the measuring point on the east side drops to 1.2 m, which shows directly the character of land built up by repeated land reclamation by drainage and by reclamation. On such low land, it is reassuring to check the expected extent of flooding in the hazard maps that local governments and the national government publish.

The separate paths land prices followed

The change of industries also leaves traces on the price of land. The values lined up here are those of the official land prices (Chika Koji), all as amounts per square meter. However, the land price points of the six locations are not of the same character. Kamaishi / Omuta / Iwaki-Yumoto / Higashida / Mizushima are residential land points, but only Kashima is an office land point, and moreover, because the grounds of the steelworks are at the center of the view, the land price point referred to is 2,892 m away. Since the values differ in both use and distance, the amount for Kashima cannot be lined up on the same scale as the other five locations.

If you look at the five residential locations, the periods of high values roughly match. In the records up to the 2026 publication, Omuta / Iwaki-Yumoto / Higashida all had their highest value for several years from 1995 (the same amount until 1998 at Omuta and Iwaki-Yumoto and until 1997 at Higashida), while Mizushima's highest was 78,200 yen in 1997-1998 and Kamaishi's was 70,500 yen in 1993-2002. On the other hand, it stands out that the position of the bottom differs from location to location. In the records up to the 2026 publication, Kamaishi and Iwaki-Yumoto recorded their lowest values in 2012, and Omuta in 2022-2023. Mizushima fell to 33,600 yen in 2023 and has stayed flat since, and for Higashida, 24,100 yen in 2026 is the lowest value in the records up to the 2026 publication. These two differ from the other three locations in that a recovery from the bottom has not yet taken shape.

There are also differences in how the values moved after hitting bottom. Iwaki-Yumoto went from 36,300 yen in 2012 to 45,100 yen in the 2026 publication, and Kamaishi from 46,200 yen in 2012 to 57,800 yen in the 2026 publication, both rising above the level of their bottoms. This can be read as two places recovering for different reasons: one where a pillar of tourism was set up, and one where production continued. By contrast, Omuta stayed at a small recovery, from 31,600 yen in 2022 to 32,700 yen in the 2026 publication, and Mizushima has stayed at 33,600 yen from 2023, with no recovery up to the 2026 publication.

For the office land point at Kashima, the highest in the records up to the 2026 publication is 20,000 yen in 2011, the lowest is 17,000 yen in 2018-2024, and 2025 is 17,200 yen. In the 2026 publication it is 17,400 yen. The range of swings is small compared with the five residential locations, which shows that the value of surfaces used as industrial land moves differently from the value of housing.

Together, the six locations show that the destination of land after an industry withdraws is not fixed to one outcome. Even among coal towns, Omuta swapped what fills its surfaces while keeping the framework of the town and its streets, and Iwaki-Yumoto became a tourist town with the hot water as its pillar. Even among iron towns, Higashida gave up part of its site to a district for commerce and exhibitions, while Kashima and Mizushima keep their blast furnaces and factories running. If you step through the era buttons on the location pages one by one and check in which era the bands of raw material yards and the rows of lined-up residential buildings appear and disappear, you can see the breathing of industry in the photographs.

The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.