Industrial Nature

Forgotten industrial heritage sites are being eroded by green plants over many long years.
The ruins emerge from the lush greenery, much like Angkor Wat when it was first discovered. The sight of greenery entwined with rusted iron and concrete awakens the memory that humans were once here.

It is a somewhat nostalgic landscape, different from untouched nature.
On the former sites of coal mining housing that once filled the hills of the Utashinai mountain range, the houses are gone and people have long since disappeared, yet daffodils and lupines, likely planted by those who once lived there, have gone wild and bloom beautifully.
A landscape that no one sees, yet it is like a paradise.

The coal mining landscape, which should have been the epitome of an artificial scene made of massive iron structures and concrete, begins to show a new form over a long period of time following the closure of the mines.
That is 'Industrial Nature'.
With the melting of the snow, the season of Industrial Nature arrives.
This is a special landscape found only in former coal-producing regions.

Utashinai City Community Revitalization Cooperation Squad, Yoko Ishii