Branding of an Industrial Heritage and Practice of Local People: The Case Study of Gunkan-Jima

This study examines how the branding and the commodification of an ex-industrial area proceed and how they affect everyday practices and historical identities of local people.

Nagasaki is a global harbor city located in southwest Japan. Less than fifteen kilometers away from the port of Nagasaki, there is Gunkan-jima island. The island was used as a coal-mining station between 1887 and 1974, contributing to the industrial modernization of Japan. In 1890, the Mitsubishi Company bought the island and set about gaining coal from the bottom of the sea. Subsequently, the company built up the island's infrastructure as well as living quarters (such as large concrete buildings, apartments) to accommodate its workers. However, in 1974, the mines were forced to close due to an abrupt shift in energy use, which made the whole population move out of the island. Since then, Gunkan-jima has been totally uninhabited.

However recently, the island started to arouse attention as a symbolic site of industrial modernization of Japan. Nagasaki City is now attempting to re-evaluate this abandoned island as an “industrial heritage” and utilizing it as a tourism resource for regenerating the declining industrial areas. There has even been a movement to make the island a world heritage site, while tours around Gunkan-jima are also becoming more and more popular.

Using data based on fieldwork conducted in Nagasaki City and semi-structured interviews with several actors related to Gunkan-jima, I found that the branding and the commodification of the ex-industrial island have been drastically promoted by the municipal merger and the “locality” as the basis of the legitimacy to represent the island has been totally changed. These findings can be utilized in the future studies that examine the mechanism of urban regeneration projects.