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Setonaikai NP, Kagawa
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A 2023 excavation on Honmura’s Takahara Castle hill expected to find castle remains, but uncovered a roughly 3-metre pit and postholes. Archaeologists think they may mark a hand-powered revolving kabuki stage.
Naoshima’s women-only Bunraku has roots in the fishing calendar: local net-owners invited performers from Awaji to play on Kotonhiki Beach during sea-bream season. Island women revived the fading puppet theatre in 1948.
Naoshima’s art project began not with a museum but a children’s-camp dream: publisher Tetsuhiko Fukutake and Mayor Chikatsugu Miyake met in 1985, and the international camp opened in 1989.
At Kadoya, 125 residents aged 5–95 set the blinking speeds of 125 LED counters in Tatsuo Miyajima’s 1998 artwork Sea of Time ’98. The first Art House Project piece was literally timed by the community.
Naoshima’s yellowtail has a hometown name: Naoshima Hamachi is raised amid the Bisan Strait’s swift currents and fed kelp-meal-enriched feed. The local brand also makes each fish’s production history traceable.
Naoshima’s SOLASHIO is made with sunlight alone: local producers spent about 10 years developing a way to crystallize Seto Inland Sea water without boiling it. The project revived the island’s once-important salt-making livelihood.
Salt-making here is far older than the art: archaeologists found late-Yayoi salt-making pottery at Kazatoyama West on Naoshima, dating production on the main island to about 2,000 years ago.
At Chichu Art Museum, Monet’s Water Lilies are displayed underground in a gallery lit only by natural daylight; weather and seasons change the light. The museum is mostly buried to protect the Seto Inland Sea landscape.
Local tradition says exiled Emperor Sutoku named Naoshima after admiring islanders’ honest, straightforward nature. The story is folklore; the town also preserves a poem legend from his reported stop at Kotonhiki Beach.
Naoshima’s copper smelter was first planned for neighboring Teshima, but local farming communities there opposed it. Naoshima welcomed the industry only after pollution and smoke-control safeguards became conditions of the deal.
When 16 years of illegal industrial dumping on neighboring Teshima came to light in 1990, Naoshima’s refinery offered land and expertise for treatment; the processing residues were then reused as smelting feedstock.
During early trials of Naoshima’s continuous copper-smelting process, workers faced a surprising problem: copper solidified onto the equipment, and they used hunting rifles to shoot the buildup loose.
A Japanese hit about a fisherman father has a Naoshima connection: island-born Tatsuo Sagi, an employee at the local refinery, wrote and composed Oyaji no Umi, later sung by Kenkichi Muraki.
Naoshima Pavilion was conceived as a “28th island” for a town made up of 27 islands. Its airy, walk-in white mesh structure at Miyanoura Port creates the playful illusion of a floating islet.
Benesse House’s seafront yellow Pumpkin has had two lives: Yayoi Kusama first showed it in 1994, then Typhoon Lupit damaged it in 2021. A newly made version returned to the same spot in October 2022.
Ishibashi, one of Naoshima’s Art Houses, was once the home of a family that prospered through Meiji-era salt-making. Artist Hiroshi Senju spent 5 years shaping the restored house and garden around his waterfall paintings.
Gokaisho means “place to play go”: islanders once gathered here for the board game. Today its art pairs a sculpted camellia indoors with a living, five-colored camellia planted in the garden.
