A learning resource on contested heritage

A virtual reality project that couldn't be released

HashimaXR was built to reconstruct Japan's Hashima Island as a living community — making space for histories of coerced labour that official narratives exclude. It was never released. This resource tells both stories.

Discover the project Choose a pathway
9
Modules
4
Pathways
60+
Sources
Free
Open access
Hashima Island today — an aerial view
A muted aerial view of Hashima today — press play to watch the project demo.
Find your starting point

Who are you arriving as?

Welcome, student

Studying heritage, digital humanities, museum studies, or East Asian history? Get the core concepts fast, then go deeper for assessed work.

Start with the Single Sitting pathway
Choose your pathway

Different depths for different contexts

Single sitting

Key concepts & the case study

The essentials of the Hashima controversy and why it matters.
60–90 min · reading
2–3 sessions

Heritage theory & evidence

Concepts, sources, and activities for seminar use.
3–4 hrs · reading + activities
Full sequence

All nine modules & the sources

The complete resource, from the project to its obstruction.
Reading 2.5–3 hrs · full engagement 8–10 hrs
Professional practice

For heritage professionals

How institutional constraints shape what can be told.
2–3 hrs · reading + reflection
The core sequence

Nine modules, from the project to its obstruction

Start with what was built and why — then examine why it couldn't be released. Each module is a self-contained ~15-minute read.

Module 04 · Preview

Labour, Empire, and Evidence

Content note. Discusses historical violence and coerced labour.

In this module:

  • Coerced labour at Hashima and how the record was made
  • Wartime mobilisation and the range of the evidence
  • What the sources can — and can't — establish
What does it mean to build an argument from sources that were never meant to record the people at their centre?
Every module gives you
  1. 1
    An overview up front — what you'll take away.
  2. 2
    Reflective prompts to pause and think.
  3. 3
    Primary sources in context, read critically.
  4. 4
    Takeaways & a citation you can reuse.
00 · Start here

The HashimaXR Project

What this is and how to use it.
01

Hashima in Time and Place

The island, the mine, the company town.
02

How Heritage Works

What "World Heritage" actually does.
03

UNESCO & Contested Heritage

The inscription and the dispute.
04

Labour, Empire, and Evidence

Coerced labour and the sources. Content note
05

Digital Histories

Memory in the online age.
06

Reading Institutional Positions

How institutions state their case.
07

Positions & Perspectives

Competing accounts, side by side.
08

Why the Project Stayed Unreleased

The obstruction, and what it means.

Companion pieces — Songs from the Coalfields, the Timeline, Social Media & Digital Memory, and The Company Town — sit alongside the core sequence in the Learning hub.

Our approach

Honest about what the record can and can't say

This is an open educational resource. It presents evidence and competing positions without collapsing them into a single verdict — and it is candid about the limits of the sources. Testimony from Korean workers mobilised to Hashima is fragmentary and contested; rather than present it as simply "available," the resource examines why it is scarce and how the archive was constructed.

On evidence and testimony

How the archive was made, whom it recorded, and whom it left out. Explored in Module 04.

Regional perspectives

Korean, Chinese, and Japanese positions analysed side by side, with provenance.
Behind the reconstruction

How a place was rebuilt — and what that required

HashimaXR reconstructed the island as a living community. The design record documents how — and the choices that a responsible reconstruction demanded.

Buildings of Hashima
The structures, reconstructed.
 The people represented
Who the world was populated with.
 Design record
The decisions, documented.
 What remained unmade
The episodes never released.