This Stairway To Hell on abandoned Hashima led to a temple. The climb was reportedly “hellishly” steep. Hacking, cyberwar and an abandoned island city are all featured in the James Bond movie Skyfall. There is a hacking hideout for the villain Raoul Silva and that crumbling city in the film was based on abandoned Hashima off the coast of Japan. Photo #1 by Jordy Meow

Aerial view of ‘Battleship Island,’ another name for the No Man’s Land that is Hashima Island. It is but one of 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture nearly 9 miles (15 kilometers) from Nagasaki, Japan. Photo #2 by kntrty

Hashima Island, also called Gunkanjima meaning Battleship Island, is Japan’s ultimate industrial ruins ghost town. From 1887 to 1974, it operated a coal mine project with the goal of retrieving coal from undersea mines. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and built Japan’s first 9-story high concrete building. Photo #3 by ThomStoodley

Approaching Gunkanjima, Battleship Island. While Hashima has long been popular for urbex, a renewed international interest was sparked when the James Bond movie Skyfall reproduced portions of the island as the hacking headquarters for a villain up against 007. Photo #4 by Stuart Frisby

The hideout in the movie Skyfall is referred to as the Dead City off the coast of Macau, but Hashima is located near Nagasaki in Japan. The newest James Bond flick was not even filmed on Hashima. Instead it was recreated at Pinewood Studios in Great Britain and the rest was created using CGI. But these images are the real Hashima industrial ruins. Photo #5 by Stuart Frisby

This island that looks like it was hit by a bomb goes by many names. After Mitsubishi officially closed the coal mine in 1974, the island sat empty and bare which is why it is sometimes referred to as Ghost Island. Whatever you call this No Man’s Land, nature is trying hard to reclaim it. Photo #6 by Ronald Woan

Gunkanjima has been open to the public since April 2009. Photo #7 by Sergio Rozas

Nagasaki City and Gunkanjima. Photo #8 by Marisoleta

Female walking along rich vegetation. Photo #9 by Roger Walch

Gunkanjima island still has much life, although none of it is human. Photo #10 by Kenta Mabuchi

SKYFALL – Official Trailer. Video #1 by SonyPictures

Ocean view to Hashima. According to one former worker’s story,”I was one of two boys forced onto a truck in my village and taken to the government office, where several thousand other Koreans ranging in age from about fourteen to twenty had been gathered. After a night at an inn, we were taken by truck to a nearby city, then by train to the port at Pusan and ship from Pusan to Shimonoseki. About 300 members of the group, including myself, were then taken by train to Nagasaki, where we arrived the following morning. All of us were being sent to Hashima.” Photo #11 by Stefan the Cameraman

Suh Jung-woo, a surviving laborer, had hoped to escape, but lost all hope upon seeing Hashima. He continued, “The island was surrounded by high concrete walls, and there was ocean, nothing but ocean, all around. It was crowded with concrete buildings as high as nine stories. … We Koreans were lodged in buildings on the edge of the island. Seven or eight of us were put together in a tiny room, giving each person no more than a few feet of space.” Photo #12 by Junichi suzuki

Inside Battleship Island. Suh Jung-woo added,”The mine was deep under the sea, the workers reaching it by elevator down a long narrow shaft. The coal was carried out from a spacious underground chamber, but the digging places were so small that we had to crouch down to work. It was excruciating, exhausting labor. Gas collected in the tunnels, and the rock ceilings and walls threatened to collapse at any minute. I was convinced that I would never leave the island alive. 4 to 5 workers in fact died every month in accidents. Modern concepts of safety were nonexistent. The corpses were cremated on Nakanoshima, the little island beside Hashima.” Photo #13 by Yasunari(康就) Nakamura(中村)

Before that day when coal was replaced by oil, back in 1959, Hashima reached its peak population of 5,259. The island was beyond crowded. Wikipedia states that the population density was 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km2) for the residential district. Photo #14 by Hey I Abandoned That

The Skyfall filmmakers couldn’t film on Hashima. The Japan Times reported, “Typhoons have worn the concrete tenements down to a dangerous state of disrepair, and even the most intrepid stuntman would balk at running down halls that could cave in several stories at any moment. Instead, production designer Dennis Gassner visited the island and oversaw construction of an impressive facsimile at the 007-dedicated stage at Pinewood Studio (U.K.) for the scene where Silva forces Bond to do some target practice on a captive.” Photo #15 by Ronald Woan

Nagasaki Hashima shack that is viewing over the remains of the island. Cabinet Magazine reported, “By the time the atomic bomb rattled the windows on Hashima apartment blocks and Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in August 1945, about 1,300 laborers had died on the island, some in underground accidents, others of illnesses related to exhaustion and malnutrition. Still others had chosen a quicker, less gruesome death by jumping over the sea-wall and trying in vain to swim to the mainland.” Photo #16 by Hisagi (氷鷺)

Hashima was featured in the History Channel’s “Life After People” in 2009 during the first season episode “The Bodies Left Behind” and showcased the decay of concrete buildings after only 35 years of abandonment. In 2011, the island was again featured in Forgotten Planet; it mentioned the “unauthorized photo shoots by urban explorers.” Regarding Skyfall, Sam Mendes told Film Journal, “The basis for the movie is ‘Make everything real, and then supplement it with visual effects.’ So you (feel) it was real and in a sense it was, because it’s three-dimensional.” Photo #17 by Ronald Woan

Gunkanjima Sea Barrier. The high sea walls were completed around 1907, making it appear from a distance as if the island were a battleship riding the waves. A Japanese newspaper reporter dubbed it Gunkanjima (Battleship Island) and the nickname stuck with the public and soon replaced the official name. Photo #18 by Stuart Frisby

Love graffiti and leaky roof at Hashima. Photo #19 by Motohiro Sunouchi

Since the release of Dr. No in 1963, the Bond film franchise and MI6 have now tackled cyberwar. “It’s a brave new world,” gadget-maker Q tells James Bond in the new film ‘Skyfall.’ The new film, released on the 50th anniversary of the storied franchise, presents a gadget-free Bond fighting with both brains and brawn against a high-tech villain with computer prowess Bill Gates would be envious of. What inspired such a villain? Stuxnet,” reported Fox. Photo #21 by skyeslee

Gunkanjima Pillars. Photo #22 by Sergio Rozas

Since the abandoned island was not been maintained, several buildings have collapsed. Other existing buildings are crumbling, but some of the collapsed exterior walls have been restored with concrete. Photo #23 by mittyoi

In 2002, Mitsubishi Material voluntarily transferred to Takashima town which was absorbed by Nagasaki city in 2005. Only a small portion of the island is “safe” enough to be open to tourists. Photo #24 by Stefan the Cameraman

Gunkanjima Sea Side Close Up. When Mitsubishi closed the mine and fired its workers, Hashima “depopulated overnight, making it modernity’s first lost city.” Nature reclaiming Hashima Island apartments Photo #25 by Hashima Island

Peeking through the broken barrier. Photo #26 by Σ64

Battleship Island cannot withstand the test of time. Photo #27 by Kinako Kocteau

Graffiti inside Gunkanjima. Photo #28 by The H.I.A.T.

Forever silent, wrecked piano. Photo #29 by The H.I.A.T.

Stagnate water. Photo #30 by Adrenaline

Nature reclaiming a room with a view at Ghost Island aka Hashima. Photo #31 by Adrenaline

Gunkanjima Support Beams. Photo #32 by skyeslee

“Nagasaki Hashima Island (端島) Gunkajima Remains.” Photo #33 by Ronald Woan

Life and death on Ghost Island, abandoned Hashima. Photo #34 by imgur

In 2009, the Hashima coal mines were submitted for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List because they “played an important part in the industrialization of Japan in the Bakamatsu and Meiji periods, and are part of the industrial heritage of Japan.” Photo #35 by The H.I.A.T.

Now leaving the industrial ruins of Hashima, the inspiration for the super-secret hacking lair in the James Bond movie Skyfall. Photo #20 by Yasunari(康就) Nakamura(中村)

Battleship Island: Japan’s Ultimate Ghost Town (from which Skyfall 007 James Bond was hacking headquarters was inspired). The Holy Grail of All Industrial Ruins. Video #2 by picturenarrative

The real Hashima. Video #3 by Thomas Nordanstad