From the sea, Hashima looks like a battleship: a small rocky island off Nagasaki surrounded by high concrete walls, crowded with tall, empty apartment blocks. The Japanese call it Gunkanjima, battleship island, and it is the most famous ruin of Japan's industrial age. Mitsubishi mined coal here from undersea seams from the late nineteenth century, and as the mine grew the island was extended with land reclaimed from the sea and built up with concrete housing, schools, a hospital and shops. At its peak it was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. When the mine closed in 1974, everyone left within weeks, and the island has been slowly crumbling ever since.
Takashima, the larger island nearby, was where it all started. In 1869 the Scottish merchant Thomas Glover, working with the Saga domain, introduced Western steam-powered mining technology here, one of the first in Japan. Both islands are part of the World Heritage site of the Meiji industrial revolution, and both carry a darker history too: during the war, Korean and Chinese labourers were brought in to work in the mines under harsh conditions, and Japan has committed to telling that part of the story as well.
You cannot ride to the islands, of course. Tour boats leave from Nagasaki harbour, and landings on Hashima depend on the weather, often cancelled when the sea is rough. But the ride along the Nagasaki Peninsula is a fine consolation. The coast road heads south from the city towards Nomozaki, winding along the shore with views out to Hashima and the scattered islands, and there is a small museum and viewpoint on the cape. North of Nagasaki, the Sotome coast offers another beautiful road, with sunset views over the East China Sea and the village where the novelist Shusaku Endo set Silence, his book about the persecuted Christians.
Nagasaki is a big city with fuel, accommodation and everything else. It is a steep, complex place, built around a deep harbour, so careful navigation pays. Try champon, a noodle soup loaded with seafood and vegetables that was invented here for Chinese students, and visit the Peace Park and the atomic bomb museum, a sobering and essential stop.