1Japan is often presented as a country devoid of natural resources, yet this island nation once had significant deposits of copper, silver and gold. After extraction methods were modernised following the Meiji Restoration, these metals played an important role in the industrialisation of Japan. Ashio 足尾 copper mine, for example, established in the sixteenth century, was one of the world’s largest copper-extracting facilities by the late 1800s. Although coal-mining in the proto-industrial period was marginal in comparison, it did nonetheless exist. Coal was used at the time as a domestic heating fuel and in salt production, particularly along the shores of the Seto Inland Sea. The introduction of Western technologies during the Meiji period helped modernise the sector and established coal as one of the driving forces behind the Industrial Revolution.

2Japan’s main coal reserves are concentrated in Kyūshū, where they fuelled the development of the iron and steel industry in the north of the island, and in Hokkaidō, where the coal was of higher quality. Coalfields were also exploited in the prefectures of Yamaguchi (Ube 宇部) and Fukushima (Jōban 常磐). However, while coal extraction was instrumental in the development of local industry, it was a costly business. Heat exposure made the work difficult; the galleries were deep and the veins often narrow and steeply inclined, making it difficult to mechanise production, at least at certain mines. In fact, the Japanese mining industry had a distinctive dual structure, separated into mines operated by the industrial giants, heavily mechanised as of the 1930s, and small, low-output sites which often mined veins close to the surface using fairly basic technology. These small mines were the first to close when foreign coal and oil imports caused Japanese coal to lose its competitive edge in the second half of the 1950s. This was particularly true in Chikuhō 筑豊. In contrast, some of the region’s large mines (in particular Miike 三池), blessed with more favourable geological conditions, stayed open until the 1990s, as did certain collieries in Hokkaidō. Only Kushiro 釧路 mine remains in operation today, albeit with a fairly limited output. For all that, the Japanese coal industry is not dead. The partial closure of Japan’s nuclear power programme means that a certain number of coal-fired plants will need to come online in the next few years.

3Despite relatively modest outputs compared to other old industrial nations, the Japanese coal industry’s remarkable weight in the country’s economic and social history makes it worthy of attention. To begin with, coal extraction is closely bound up with the history of Japanese capitalism. Having been nationalised at the beginning of Meiji, the majority of Japan’s large mines were sold to private investors in the 1880s, paving the way for the formation and development of the industrial conglomerates, or zaibatsu. Incidentally, one of the most influential figures in the Japanese business world before World War II was Dan Takuma 団琢磨 (1858­–1932), a former engineer at Miike mine and chairman of the Japan Industrial Club (Nihon kōgyō kurabu 日本工業倶楽部). Some of Japan’s pivotal figures, symbols of the country’s nascent capitalism, made their fortunes investing in the mines. Examples include the Asō 麻生 industrial and political dynasty and Hirooka Asako 広岡浅子 (1849–1919), subject of the popular NHK drama Asa ga kita あさが来た (broadcast in 2015 and 2016).

4Mines were also closely linked to the history of the labour movement. Working conditions in the industry became the subject of wide public debate for the first time in 1888, when a report by Matsuoka Kōichi 松岡好一 (1865–1921) in the magazine Nihonjin 日本人 highlighted the plight of workers at Takashima 高島 mine, off the coast of Nagasaki. After World War II, miners were often seen as frontline elements in the political battle against Japan’s post-war conservative governments. Against this backdrop, the year-long Miike miners’ dispute in 1959–1960 symbolised the labour movement’s opposition both to rationalisation-fuelled job cuts and employers’ growing hold over the unions. The bitterness engendered by the defeat of the original Miike union and its replacement by a new management-backed one was compounded by a deterioration in working conditions that caused one of the deadliest explosions in coal-mining history, with 458 miners killed and 839 injured, many of them permanently.

5Coal-mining became an integral part of Japan’s art and literary scene when the dire impoverishment of certain mining communities in the 1950s and 1960s began to inspire a wave of militant artists and writers. Examples include the shots by Domon Ken 土門拳 (1909–1990) of children in Chikuhō, the photographs by Chō Gunje 趙根在 (1938–1997) depicting Japan’s poverty-stricken small mines, the descriptions by Ueno Eishin 上野英信 (1923–1987) of unemployed miners, and the literary movement Sākuru-mura サークル村. Mining communities also provided film-makers with a fertile ground for portraying the human condition during the first two decades of the post-war period. The 1959 film Nianchan 二あんちゃん [My Second Brother], by Imamura Shōhei 今村昌平 (1926–2006), tells the story of two children in a mining town in Saga Prefecture hit hard by the recession caused by the end of the Korean War. The film was released at the height of the Black Feather (Kuroi hane 黒い羽) movement and its cast took part in a national fundraising campaign for Chikuhō’s unemployed miners. Then in 1962 came Otoshiana [Pitfall] by Teshigahara Hiroshi 勅使河原宏 (1927–2001), which features a trade union dispute that leads to the murder of the main character – an implicit reference to the Miike strike, complete with shots of desolate landscapes and deserted towns emptied of their inhabitants by the mining crisis.

7Despite the breadth of contributions to this special issue of Cipango in English, it is impossible to fully convey the importance of coal-mining in Japan’s economic, social, political and cultural history. The aim is nonetheless to highlight coal’s potential as a multidisciplinary research theme within the field of Japanese Studies.

8Cipango in English 7 opens with a paper by Bernard Thomann, who reveals how human resources management within the mines was modernised between the interwar period and the end of Japan’s economic miracle using the most advanced labour management techniques, transforming the everyday lives of miners over the century. Although workforce reproduction was vital while the industry expanded, the sector’s decline was accompanied by rationalisation measures that posed new health and occupational risks to miners. Makiko Andro-Ueda looks at the beginning of this period of decline in the late 1950s, and in particular the literary journal Sākuru-mura, highlighting the way mining communities were seen by socially engaged Japanese authors as epitomising the working-class condition. In fact, writings from the time provide precious testimony on the reality of work in the mines. In addition to its working-class roots, mining has always attracted a variety of marginalised populations. Kaiko Miyazaki illustrates how the burakumin of Chikuhō were an important source of labour for the region’s collieries and how mining now forms an integral part of the collective memory of this population. As for Korean labour in the mines from the 1920s to the end of World War II, its representation in literature remains a paradox, as underlined by Mayumi Shimosakai. Zainichi Korean authors evoke the memory with difficulty, as if it were a sort of unspoken taboo or “unspeakable subject”. In contrast, socially engaged Japanese authors have openly described the working conditions and harsh discrimination suffered by Korean miners. The impact of mining extended beyond the industry’s workers to local populations. Cyrian Pitteloud probes Japan’s first major case of industrial pollution and shows how, following years of inaction, the government was gradually forced to set up an investigative committee, wade into the dispute between protesters and the Furukawa zaibatsu, and suggest its own solutions to the pollution. While mining developed hand in hand with the labour movement, it was also crucial to the upswing in Japan’s economy and trade, as we saw earlier. Alexandre Roy describes how coal was a key commodity that enabled Japan to participate in international trade flows and drove the development of Moji trading port in northern Kyūshū.

9These papers illustrate the wealth of perspectives available to researchers working in the humanities and social sciences. The multidisciplinary potential of coal explains why, despite the industry having all but ceased activity in Japan over 20 years ago, the economic and social context in which it developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continues to be studied, both in Japan and overseas. This issue of Cipango in English thus joins a flourishing body of research, reflecting the subject’s ability to highlight the different economic, social, political and cultural challenges faced by Japan since it first entered the industrial era.

10Finally, this editorial would not be complete without thanking all those who helped produce Cipango in English 7: Simon Ebersolt for proofreading the original French articles; Noémi Godefroy for her help with the English; Michael Lucken for his support as head of the Centre d’Études Japonaises; and Karen Grimwade and Oriane de Laubrière for translating the papers into English. This special issue of the journal was partially funded by ANR Eurasemploi.