2024-01-16 15:27:00
You do need a bit of imagination. If the angle at which the catamaran approaches it is right, it actually looks as if a sperm whale has appeared between the islands: an enormously large, green mossy specimen, motionless behind a veil of fog. It looks so enchanted, as if it had wandered into Japan’s Seto Inland Sea from an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki.
Kujira-Jima, that’s the name of the bizarrely shaped island, is one of countless island spots and rocks in the Seto Inland Sea, which stretches from Osaka well beyond Hiroshima to the port city of Shimonoseki and separates Japan’s three southern main islands, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu .
With its around 3,000 smaller islands, “Japan’s Mediterranean”, as it is also called, is an ideal area for island hopping. A tour of the so-called art islands, including Inujima, Naoshima and Teshima, is particularly worthwhile.
Source: Infographic WELT
Crazy installations by contemporary artists stand in the middle of the landscape, daring buildings by star architects are home to exciting museums, some of which even have originals by Claude Monet. Art saved these islands from ruin: as traditional economic sectors withered and more and more residents moved away, the island world was consistently transformed into a huge exhibition space.
You can explore this on your own using regular ferries, although this is quite inconvenient. It is more comfortable on a guided island trip by catamaran.
Art attracts tourists to the islands
One of the most amazing art islands is Naoshima. Spectacular sculptures catch your eye as soon as you dock in the small harbor.
The giant pumpkin that shines in the sun right next to the water seems almost surreal. Artist Yayoi Kusama’s iconic vegetables seem like a hallucination in this island world, where people lived primarily from fishing until the 1990s.
Pristine beach on Naoshima, one of around 3,000 islands in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea
Quelle: Getty Images/Moment Open
But they were yielding less and less, says Haruku Hosokawa, who accompanies the catamaran art trip as a tour guide. “Many locals left the islands. The municipalities wanted to revitalize the islands.”
A partner was found in the Benesse publishing house, which realized the bold idea of building a series of top-class museums for modern and contemporary art on the islands. That actually brought a turnaround to shrinking communities – and tourists from home and abroad.
Buildings by star architect Tadao Ando on Naoshima
Today Naoshima is known for several unusual museums, which were designed by the Japanese star architect Tadao Ando and are works of art in themselves. The Chichu Art Museum, for example, was built into a hill and is mostly underground, but only uses natural light to illuminate the works on display.
Tadao Ando built the Chichu Art Museum into a hill
Quelle: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The Lee Ufan Museum, which was added in 2010, shows the huge installations of the South Korean artist of the same name, created from concrete, stones and gigantic pieces of iron. And you can even stay overnight in the Benesse House: it is both a museum and a resort hotel. Buses connect it to other art hotspots on the island.
Naoshima is also an important venue for the Setouchi Triennale, which has taken place every three years since 2010 on around a dozen of the inland sea islands. The art festival with Japanese and international stars attracted more than a million visitors in 2016 and exactly 1,178,484 people in 2019.
The next Triennale is scheduled to take place in 2022, but it is worth visiting at any time. In addition to the museums worth seeing and other permanent art highlights, a number of works remain permanently after each festival – so the art islands are an exhibition that is constantly growing.
A ruin became a museum
Also on Inujima Island, which translates as “Dog Island” – after a rock that is reminiscent of this animal. Even as you drive over, you can see the old industrial chimneys protruding from the greenery in the distance. They belong to a former copper refinery that opened 100 years ago.
Only ten years later it had to close due to tumbling copper prices. “After that, the ruins stood empty until they became the Seirensho Art Museum,” says Hosokawa during the tour. Today, less than 50 people live in the 7.4 square kilometers – and art surrounds their everyday life.
Installations and sculptures stand in front of small gardens and traditional wooden houses. Art intellectuals from all over the world wearing box glasses enthusiastically trudge through the landscape, photographing the ruins, the works of art and the old islanders who seem like part of a production but have actually lived here for decades.
They go about their business stoically, digging up beds, sitting in front of their huts and silently observing the intrusive visitors who seem like they are from another planet.
Rural life and modern art on Teshima
The neighboring island of Teshima has at least 700 permanent residents, is significantly larger and quite hilly. The best way to explore the fertile island is by e-bike, curving past olive trees, strawberry fields and tangerine groves.
The rice terraces near the shore in the Karato area are particularly picturesque. Over the years, some of them have been abandoned because there are fewer and fewer farmers here. However, an initiative is now working to revitalize the fields. And so here too you can experience a strange mixture of traditional rural life and new, exciting art.
The highlight is the “Space” of the Teshima Art Museum. The name fits, the building object looks like a UFO made of concrete. With its flawless beauty, it shapes the landscape and merges with it, an ensemble of architecture, art installation and natural environment by the sea.
The museum, created by the Tokyo architect Ryue Nishizawa, encloses a single work: Matrix, a total work of art by the Japanese artist Rei Naito, whose work is also in the MoMA in New York.
Isolated drops of water roll across the ground, the wind rustles quietly through the heavy silence. The visitors sneak around in their socks, lie on the floor, whisper reverently – and enjoy the meditative experience of slowing down and breaking down boundaries.
How people once lived here
On the island of Honjima, however, the tranquility of rural Japan has been preserved particularly well, far away from the high speed of the bright neon metropolises. The highlight is the harbor town of Kasashima with numerous buildings from the Edo period (1600–1867): dark brown wood, gray tiled roofs, a few touches of green in the alleys.
Most are private homes, although three are open to visitors. Their interior design shows how people once lived here – and sometimes still do.
The average age of the residents is over 70 years. But there is also young art to be seen here: installations from past triennials have been preserved for visitors in the area around Honjima Port.
With the catamaran on the Seto Inland Sea
Art island hopping is pleasantly slowed down on the catamaran. The boat purrs from stop to stop through the mostly glassy sea at up to six knots. Then there’s time to make yourself comfortable in the seating area on deck and take in the view.
The Seto Sea can be ideally explored by catamaran
Source: Sascha Rettig
The main islands lie like a narrow strip in the distance. Every now and then an island comes into the picture, sometimes an abandoned, rusty industrial plant, otherwise: water and space. The monotony, accompanied by the sound of the sea, has something meditative about it, a welcome opportunity to switch off before the next highlight awaits at the next landing stage.
You spend the night on board the catamaran, which sometimes returns to the starting point of the tour in Uno Port in the evening and lies there in the harbor until the next morning – within walking distance of a spacious onsen, one of those typical Japanese wellness facilities with a minimalist garden.
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There you sit in the hot water pools or in one of the wooden barrels, watched curiously by the Japanese. For inexperienced Europeans, the water temperature varies between hot and damn hot – a baptism of fire for the fine art of Far Eastern relaxation.
A still life typical of Japan
The last night of the catamaran art island tour, however, is not spent sleeping in the cabin, but on land – on Kujira-Jima, the island in the shape of a whale. You have the uninhabited island to yourself and you spend the night in a tent.
In 30 minutes you can circle the small island and, if the weather is good, you can swim or try stand-up paddling. Otherwise, relaxing is on the agenda, as there are no special art installations to view here.
Or maybe yes? As is typical in Japan, the wood for the campfire in the evening is meticulously stacked in a straight line, no log is out of line. And of course there are slippers standing perfectly parallel in front of the night’s accommodation – a still life that, as a European in this art island world, can definitely be perceived as art.
Tips and information
Getting there: As soon as you can, you fly to Osaka, from there take the train to Okayama, where the scheduled ferries and the guided catamaran tour to the art islands start from Uno Port.
Tours on the water: Seto Yacht Charter offers guided sailing tours with the catamaran, the shortest trip “Islands and modern art” lasts 2 nights/3 days (seto-yacht-charter.jp). Significantly larger with 19 rooms is the “Guntû”, a floating luxury hotel that also travels on the Seto Inland Sea, different tours, 2 nights/3 days (guntu.jp). If you want to explore Lake Seto on your own with scheduled ferries, you can find information and booking options in English at japan-guide.com
Accommodation: Instead of or in addition to a ship tour with an overnight stay on board, you can also spend the night on land on the art islands, for example in the “Benesse House” on Naoshima, a mix of museum and hotel (benesse-artsite.jp). There are various traditional, rather simple guesthouses on Teshima, such as the “Teshima Eco House” (under teshima-navi.jp This can be found next to other accommodations).
Further information: Information about Naoshima and the other art islands can be found, for example, at benesse-artsite.jp/en. Background information about the works of art that remain from past triennials, as well as information about the next art festival setouchi-artfest.jp/en.
General Japan information: Japan Tourist Office, jnto.de
Participation in the trip was supported by JNTO and Seto Yacht Charter. Our standards of transparency and journalistic independence can be found at axelspringer.de/unabhaengigkeit.
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG. We will be happy to deliver them to your home regularly.
Source: WELT AM SONNTAG
This article was first published online in May 2020.
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