Hashima is a small island located off the extreme southwest coast of Japan, about ten miles from Nagasaki. Its darkwarship-like silhouette earned it the nickname of Gunkanjima (“battleship island”). During the wave of industrialisation in the nineteenth century, a coal seam was discovered on the island and the Mitsubishi corporation opened a mine there. Workers settled on the island and the population increased, the small mining town quickly becoming a modern and autonomous settlement.