Laundry summer hill its surfaces stripped back by

its surfaces stripped back by decades of damp and neglect

The machine looks less like something waiting to be used and more like something that has simply been left

Rusting machinery and scattered debris across a concrete floor

A timber-clad woolshed sits raised on stumps in open paddock

its surface corroded and characters fading under decades of Hokkaido winters

Laundry summer hill its surfaces stripped back byFaded garments hang on a washing line inside a deteriorating room in the Ogurawa settlement's company housing. The space sits within Nichitsu Mining Village, the self contained community Nitchitsu Co. Ltd. built to support the Chichibu Mine workforce. The last permanent resident left the settlement in September 2006. Part of the Nichitsu Mining Village series.