The stratum of desire left behind by the Anthropocene

A black kite soars through the air, gliding pleasantly. The winds must be favorable. Inujima is a small island where you can get anywhere in about 20 to 30 minutes on foot from the ferry port. Beginning in the Edo era (1603-1867) and peaking around 1897, the quarrying industry thrived, and the population of Inujima grew significantly. Later, in the decade from 1909 to 1919, there was a booming copper smelting industry with several smelters in operation, residents numbered about 3,500, and there was even a red-light district. Today, the area is depopulated with no sign of its former vigor.

Although smelting took place for only ten years, the smelters were of a considerable scale, and six chimneys remain, spread over a vast area. With changes in the price of copper, the smelters closed, the people left, and the whole enterprise became a ruin. Today a path leads to this industrial relic, a remnant of its heritage. The chimneys soar skywards from the dense forests surrounding their bases. As on Nagasaki’s Gunkanjima Island, one is struck by the desolation left in the wake of industrial ambition.

The chimney remains are tangled with climbing plants that sway in the wind like downy hairs. Some chimneys retain their original form, while others are half collapsed, but their dilapidated condition imbues this place with a unique emotional quality. In combination, the vestiges of human greed, the long years of neglect, and nature’s providence in covering up the traces as if they never existed, create a deep silence among those who visit this place.

Apparently, the copper refining process produces a byproduct called "karami", containing iron oxide and glass. Bricks created by pouring this into a mold with a hand ladle were called "karami bricks", and “karami sand” is produced by cooling karami under running water and then pulverizing it. Some of these bricks were used as building materials, and their remains can still be seen today, while others, along with the karami sand, were disposed of around the smelters and on the beach, evoking the devastation of the environment caused by industrial waste.

The karami bricks, glistening in the low sunlight, looked like rustic pottery or the solidified Pahoehoe lava, which retains its smooth surface, appearing still fluid, which brought to mind, of all things, a lava beach in the Galapagos Islands I once visited. The luster of the glassy mixture was like obsidian, and the smelters’ walls and floors, now ruins, were indeed sublime. It was around 7 o'clock in the morning when I visited the site, so it may have been the crystalline light of a bright, cloudless morning that made this industrial wreckage appear as beautiful material.

Artist Yukinori Yanagi explored the revitalization of Inujima from an artistic point of view. Architect Hiroshi Sambuichi designed an architectural installation that features an air-cooling mechanism based on the flow of wind through an original chimney at the site. Both creative works were inspired by these remains. While paying respect to these ideas, I cannot help but think about the enduring vestiges of Homo Sapiens’ ambition, as they continue on beyond contemporary art and architecture, and their ultimate fate.

2023.1.2