Naoshima

As we make our way west, we had to make a stop near Naoshima, Japan's ‘art island’. This was the island that inspired Dan's first novel, which he wrote between 2020-23, and has still failed to find an agent for 🙃

The Fukutake publishing company set up a collection of installation galleries on remote islands in the Seto Inland Sea forty years ago, which were previously just fishing and mining outposts. Naoshima is the first and biggest of these, and in the early morning we were two of approximately ten people catching the ferry for a day of museum hopping. Tadao Ando is the architect behind much of the project, and his distinctive concrete design aesthetic is strangely fitting amidst the lush green trees of the island in summer. The sharp lines half-covered in vines, sunk in the vegetation, feel like nuclear bunkers decades after the blast as nature claws its way back.

We started at Benesse House Museum, which houses a collection including Hockney and Basquiat, before moving on to the Lee Ufan and Valley Gallery, where we saw Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden: a nice bit of continuity from when we saw the same Kusama piece in Melbourne back in early January.

We zipped around the island on electric bikes, much to our relief as the mercury climbed! Dan also had some success avoiding the heat by wearing a soaking wet bucket hat most of the time... very effective, but debatable fashion choice. We gleefully whizzed up and down the verdant hills, dropping in to see Monet’s water lilies at the Chichu Museum after a quick cooling dip in the sea.

Naoshima galleries have some of the best crowd control we've seen anywhere in Asia, with drones and photography banned, and in some cases visitor numbers strictly limited to preserve the meditative aura for each installation. Chelsea is very pleased with this approach—it's about as idiot-proof as it's possible to be for a public gallery. It's also why most of our photos are focused on the gallery exteriors; a lot of the art itself is off limits for cameras.

We finished up at the Naoshima New Museum of Art, so new it has only been open a month, before a visit to a small 'art onsen' featuring a life-size elephant sculpture above the baths.

Back in the port town of Uno where we were staying, we went for dinner at a small izakaya covered in unflattering pictures of a baby and a cartoon old man, with no English menu. It pays to take a gamble on these places sometimes in Japan—we got amazing sashimi, and Dan bought their t-shirt with the 'konaki-jiji' old man on it. It will feature in future updates, rest assured!

Now, we're heading back out of Uno (an Uno reverse, if you will), to head further west for more cycling in Onomichi. Expect more posts to come thick and fast for the next few days 🤩🇯🇵Read more