Living Quarters Alley writing Boarded Public Housing at Yubari

Boarded Public Housing at Yubari

and United States Navy vessels from 1897 until 1999

Sunlight cuts through the windows of a derelict studio inside the Ogurawa settlement

its buildings timber-framed false fronts replicating 1880s main-street architecture

built by hand from split eucalypt and left standing when the land could no longer carry a family

Living Quarters Alley writing Boarded Public Housing at YubariA narrow alleyway cuts between the crumbling concrete walls of the Ogurawa settlement's worker housing, overgrown vegetation pressing in from either side. The company housing once sheltered miners and their families at the height of Chichibu Mine's operations, when the valley held a population of more than 2,000. The last permanent resident left in September 2006. Part of the Nichitsu Mining Village series.