I’m sitting on a concrete floor watching water droplets as they skitter across the smooth surface. Around me, other people seem equally transfixed. They stand in silent contemplation staring at beads of water bubbling up from tiny holes in the floor, or lie gazing at the vast domed roof, where two oval openings let natural light flood in. The slightest movement echoes around the space. I take a pen out to make some notes and a member of staff suddenly appears at my side and indicates that I should put it away. Phones are also a strict no-no.
Teshima Art Museum turns the standard idea of what a museum is on its head. For a start it’s empty. Or to be precise, there is nothing on display. Instead of looking at art works or objects, the visitor is invited to contemplate nature in its purest form: light, water, air. The effect is deeply calming. After 20 minutes, I practically float out.
Outside, the museum is just as arresting. Curved and low lying, it looks both other-worldly and somehow part of the surrounding landscape. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the museum is its location – next to a rice terrace on a small island nearly two hours from the nearest city, Okayama, in western Japan.
And it’s not the only arty attraction in the area. This is one of 18 museums, galleries, installations and projects across three islands that together form a unique rural art paradise.
The story behind the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, to give the project its full name, is intriguing too. It started in the late 1980s when billionaire businessman Soichiro Fukutake began exploring the smaller islands of the Seto Inland Sea, the body of water that separates three of Japan’s four main islands. Fukutake wanted to transform three islands that had borne more than their fair share of the country’s rapid industrialisation – refineries were built on Naoshima and Inujima, and illegal waste was dumped on Teshima – and had then been forgotten.
He decided to do it through contemporary art, and persuaded architect Tadao Ando, AKA “the king of concrete”, to collaborate on Benesse House Museum on Naoshima. The museum signalled the scale of Fukutake’s vision, which went beyond economic reboot to create a utopia showcasing not only world-class art but also a simpler, slower way of life, far removed from “monstrous cities”.
High on a hill overlooking the sea, the museum is filled with modern art greats: Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cy Twombly, but its most iconic piece is on the beach below: a giant yellow pumpkin by Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama, a surreal beacon jutting out into the sea. Another, red, pumpkin greets visitors as they disembark at the harbour, smart phone cameras at the ready – even the Naoshima ferry bears Kusama’s signature motif of dots. It’s close to the wacky I Love Yu public bathhouse, a collage of junkyard scrap and neon signs. Forgot your towel? You can buy one from the vending machine outside.
Ando went on to create more architectural masterpieces, including Chichu Art Museum, a set of interlinked, half-buried buildings that house Fukutake’s personal collection of five Monet water lily paintings. For me, the most striking work at Chichu is the Walter de Maria room, a temple-like space with golden pillars mounted on the walls and steps leading up to a giant granite sphere. Here, as in other museums, the reverence for art – among both the young staff and visitors – is palpable. And after a while I’m relieved to step onto the cafe terrace and reconnect with simpler pleasures – the view of sea and distant land that looks like it’s been painted onto the horizon in shades of grey – and to choose between a coffee or a bright blue Sora-Iro Cola.
There is enough art on Naoshima alone to fill two days. Yet most visitors tick it off on a day trip as they whiz between Osaka, to the east, and Hiroshima, to the west. But it’s madness to make the epic journey and not see Teshima and Inujima, too. It may take a bit of planning to reach all the islands by ferry (see setouchi-artfest.jp for tips) but the reward is huge. And this year there is even more reason to linger. The 2019 Setouchi Triennale art festival will ramp up the creativity with an astonishing array of artworks – 200 in total, around half of them permanent – across 12 islands and two ports, Takamatsu and Uno. Unlike some art fairs, where glamour and wealth are on display as much as art and design, the Setouchi Triennale is firmly rooted in the history and character of the region. Projects will transform abandoned buildings, highlight artisanship and involve locals, including children.
After a flight to Osaka, two train rides, and an hour’s drive, my first day in the region is a short, intense dip into Japanese culture at a serene ryokan, in the old town of Kurashiki on the mainland, an immaculately preserved cluster of 300-year-old wooden houses on the banks of a canal. Dazed by lack of sleep I’m grateful for the gentle guidance of the kimono-clad staff, who seem to glide about as if on casters, and lead me through a marathon nine-course meal of exquisite dishes almost too pretty to eat. Breakfast continues my immersion therapy, with a spread of rice, mackerel and a pickled plum that’s such a powerful hit of salty sourness it instantly wakes me up. Across the canal from Ryokan Kurashiki is the Ohara Museum of Art, which was the first in Japan to show western art when it opened in 1930 but we head for a very different museum.
We drive to Hoden port to catch the little ferry to Inujima. The big draw of this tiny island, with a population of less than 100, is Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, built within the ruins of a copper refinery. Entering through a long, dark, mirrored corridor feels like walking through a dream, a sensation that the next room does nothing to dissipate: wooden doors and window frames of a deconstructed house are suspended from wires above a pool of water. The house had belonged to controversial Japanese novelist and nationalist Yukio Mishima, a fierce critic of post-war modernisation, who famously committed ritual suicide.
A short walk from the museum, a hamlet of traditional, clay-roof houses and small gardens is dotted with funky installations. Walking among these simple homes is a glimpse of another Japan, the flipside of the frenetic, high-rise, high-tech image we’re more familiar with.
“It’s another country,” Shihoko Nakano tells me as I sit down for lunch in Aruei, the restaurant she runs in her own home. “It’s so quiet here, and there’s so little traffic that it’s very different from the rest of Japan.” She’s referring to Teshima, population 1,000, where she lives, but her words apply to all the islands I visit.
Thanks to its mild climate, the Seto Inland Sea is often referred to as the Mediterranean of Japan. Here, olives, lemons, peaches and many vegetables thrive, and Aruei’s simple set menu reflects seasonal flavours: pumpkin with anchovies and basil; mustard spinach with a tofu dressing; almond and fig cake. Teshima strawberries are prized across Japan and beyond, selling for more than £40 a kilo in Tokyo. I pop into Ichigoya, a family-run cafe, and order a fantastic ice-cream made from strawberries grown in the farm opposite. It costs about £2.
I spend the night on Teshima at the White Dormitory, a three-room villa hidden down an alley, past a barber’s shop. Its minimalist ascetic is in keeping with much of the art, but Takamatsuya, a local minshuku (a simple B&B, from £44pp), provides a cheaper, more authentic experience. In the morning I have breakfast with my interpreter, Tetsuhiro Murakami, in Kiyomamu, another restaurant opened to cater for the growing number of visitors. We drink tea among shelves piled high with crockery collected by the owner from nearby empty homes.
In an “art paradise” you are never far from a creative project – and a short walk from Kiyomamu is Teshima Yokoo House, combining galleries of artist Tadanori Yokoo’s bold, colourful paintings and a riotous sculpture garden dotted with red boulders, within an 80-year-old cedarwood house. A modern addition, an ominous looking black brick tower, is lined inside with 9,000 postcards of waterfalls. I gawp at them, stumped.
The sheer volume of art on offer in the area is overwhelming, yet while Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima islands are the main draw, the Setouchi Triennale, first held in 2010, has helped other islands foster connections with artists.
My favourite project, and the one that seems to encapsulate the essence of the area, is the Missing Post Office on Awashima. Tokyo artist Saya Kubota has turned a defunct post office into a living art work overseen by an 82-year-old postmaster who worked the same spot for 45 years before retiring. Dressed in a uniform designed by Kubota, his “job” now is to greet visitors – which he does with a massive smile – stamp the postcards they write, anonymously, to anyone real or imagined, past, present or future, and deposit them in tin boxes that hang in the centre of the room.
The Missing Post Office will be part of this year’s triennale. Kubota plans to visit in the autumn. If she’s not at the post office, you might spot her around the island – she’s hard to miss. Riding a bike in her postmistress uniform, looking like a character in a Wes Anderson film, she’s the embodiment of all that is wonderful about this extraordinary, uplifting destination.
• The Setouchi Triennale runs over three periods: 26 April-26 May, 19 July-25 August and 28 September-4 November. The trip was provided by the Setouchi Tourism Authority (setouchitrip.com)
