The Sado gold and silver mines

The island that paid for the shogunate, and the history it argues about

Sado is an island off Niigata whose gold and silver paid for the Tokugawa state. Native gold and argentite in quartz have been known here since at least the Heian period, and the Aikawa mine that opened in 1601 became the largest and worked into the modern era; the mountain above Aikawa is split down the middle by a V-shaped cleft where the miners took the ore body out from the top. The island was run directly by the shogunate, and convicts and drifters were sent here to work the drainage. The mines were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024, a listing that was contested: Korean sources record 1,000 to 2,000 Koreans conscripted to work here during the war, Japan’s ambassador to UNESCO acknowledged the forced labour in 2015, and critics say the exhibit installed as part of the listing still does not say so plainly.