A MONTH IN JAPAN – OSAKA TO NAOSHIMA, NOVEMBER 25 – 26, 2025

November 25, 2025

Getting to the island of Naoshima from Osaka was a complicated venture, so the day before we left Osaka, we went to the train station to ask for help booking our connections. What might have taken us hours to figure out (and might have been wrong) was accomplished by the station agent in about five minutes.  I’ve never seen a more efficient public servant at a keyboard and computer terminal than the Japan Railways agent who organized our trip to Naoshima.  Truly impressive!

So, tickets in hand, we bid tah tah to Central Mansions, walked over to Tanimachi-6 chome Metro Station for the last time and took the Tanimachi Line to Higashi-Umeda Station, where we transferred to the Midosuji Line for Shin-Osaka Station and our shinkansen.   

• Shin-Osaka Station

At the station, we stored our bags in a locker and went in search of lunch in the food corridor.  I had wanted to try the Osaka specialty, okonomiyaki, a savory griddled cabbage and egg batter pancake filled with seafood and topped with a mayonnaise-barbecue sauce concoction.  We had tried this in Tokyo and didn't like it, so I thought I'd give it another try.  The second time was not a charm.  It was gross.  

My husband wisely ordered iyaki-goza to share and an ikinari steak.

Having refueled and retrieved our bags, we hurried through the cavernous station in the direction of the shinkansen platform, where we boarded the Sanyo Shinkansen bound for Hiroshima. We got off at Okayama Station and picked up a local train destined for Uno port, where we would get the ferry to Naoshima. The whole trip would take about four hours of travel time, plus transfer wait time, so basically the better part of a day.

• Uno Port

We got a bit lost at Uno port.  We could see the harbor but we couldn’t figure out how to get there. So close, and yet so far.  We had a timed boat ticket, so we rushed toward what we thought was the pleasure craft harbor, ending up at the commercial port instead, where we were animatedly waved away by some stevedores.  Just when it seemed like we were screwed, we saw some people with suitcases walking leisurely toward a building nearby.  We hurtled toward them and, sure enough, we were finally at the point of embarkation.  We settled into the waiting room, flushed and frazzled. The ferry arrived shortly thereafter and it was just a 15-minute ride to Miyanomoura, Naoshima’s western port.  Quite an experience!

We had booked Cottage Naoshima through booking.com and used Google Maps to walk the ca. two kilometers from the port to our destination, with a stop-off at the 7-Eleven in town for provisions (that would be something for breakfast, a bottle of wine, and Japanese crackers).  Honestly, even in the most out-of-the-way places in Japan, everything is so convenient! 

• Cottage Naoshima 

Our cute little red cottage was just like summer camp!  Knotty pine paneling throughout, a serviceable kitchen, a spartan but comfortable bed-sitting room, and a nice bathroom with a Japanese toilet (heated seat!).

Cottage Naoshima is affiliated with My Lodge, a hotel perched on a hill overlooking the cottages and the Seto Inland Sea.  We had booked dinner at My Lodge that evening, and after unpacking for our three nights, we climbed up the hill in the dark, using our phones as flashlights.   

Dinner was nothing special, but it was close by.  To our surprise, most of our fellow diners were speaking French.  This was a harbinger:  the vast majority of tourists we encountered on Naoshima were French speakers.  This is, after all, a destination art island.

• Naoshima, How it Became an Art Island in the Seto Inland Sea

Some background on how Naoshima came to be an art island is in order.  Its story is a chapter in the larger story of Japan’s dramatic depopulation crisis.  When the Lonely Planet Japan Guide refers to Japan as the Land of the Setting Sun, the sobriquet is not unearned:

In 2022 the country’s population dropped for the 12^th consecutive year, by half a million.  About twice as many people died as were born.  In 2023 Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that Japan’s population will fall by 30% over the next half century.  From 123 million people in 2023, Japan is forecast to hit 100 million in 2056, and 87 million by 2070.  To put it bluntly, Japan is disappearing. 

The population decline has hit rural Japan the hardest, and Naoshima is no exception.  The major employer on the island is still Mitsubishi Materials, which has operated a copper smelting plant on the north coast since 1917, poisoning the landscape.  Mitsubishi’s economic fortunes have faded since the 1960s, leaving the island without an economic reason for its working age residents to stay. 

In the 1970s, the island’s mayor persuaded the wealthy owner of Fukutake Publishing (renamed Benesse Corporation is 1985) to help reverse the trend.  Their idea was to focus on the south side of the island, the protected Setonaikai National Park, and develop it as a national children’s campground.  With the project only barely begun, Fukutake died in 1986 and his son took over the business and the renewal project, with much more ambitious plans.  As Lonely Planet puts it, “Along with the architect Tadao Ando, he slowly but surely set about transforming Naoshima into a destination ‘art island.’”  There are ten major museums on the island designed by Tadao Ando, in addition to art galleries.  For an overview, see this New York Times link.

• Tadao Ando and his Museums on Naoshima

A note on Tadao Ando, born in Osaka in 1941, self-taught and known for his integration of architecture and landscape, who is recognized as Japan's most famous contemporary architect.  

The Taschen edition of Ando, Complete Works 1975 – Today, describes his architecture, which is difficult to capture with an iPhone:

The first impression created by Tadao Ando’s architecture is that of its materiality.  His powerful concrete walls set a limit.  Beyond this point there is no passage but that which is opened by his will.  A second impression of Tadao Ando’s architecture is its tactility.  Hard walls seem soft to the touch. They exclude, then enclose, admitting light, wind, and the passing visitor, who leaves behind the disorder of everyday existence to be sheltered in a realm of stillness.  A third impression of Tadao Ando’s architecture is its emptiness.  Within, only light and space surround the visitor. 

In the course of two full days on Naoshima, we visited five museums and five art venues.  On our first full day, we had timed tickets to Benesse House, Valley Gallery, Lee Ufan Museum, and Chichu Art Museum, all of which were designed by Tadao Ando in his signature poured-in-place concrete style.  Photography is prohibited at the latter two venues, so the images you see in this post from the Lee Ufan Museum are of the exterior and grounds only.  The images of the Chichu Art Museum are courtesy of Benesse art site and This Paper.

November 26, 2025

We walked the 2.5 kilometers from Naoshima Cottage to Benesse House, delighted by views of the crystalline sea along the way. 

• Benesse House

I will let Tadao Ando's building and the sample of just some of the many indoor and outdoor works we saw speak for themselves.  The works are listed alphabetically by artist.

Tadao Ando, Benesse House Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum Study Model, 1996 

Benesse House actual floor plans.

 

Benesse House entrance.

John Chamberlain, Chromo Domo, 2006

Katsuo Katase, Drink a Cup of Tea, 1987-94

 Mark Kostabi, A drift in the Baltic Sea, 1989

Richard Long, Full Moon Stone Circle, 1997

Richard Long, In land Sea Driftwood Circle, 1997

Richard Long, River Avon Mud Circles, by the Inland Sea, 1997

Yves Klein, Vénus Bleue, 1983 

Yannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1996 

Bruce Nauman, 100 Live and Die, 1984

 

Shinro Ohtake,  Shipyard Works:  Cut Bow, 1990

Shinro Ohtake,  Shipyard Works:  Stern with Hole, 1990

George Rickey, Three Squares Vertical Diagonal, 1972-82

Sean Scully, Wall, 1988

Frank Stella, The Grand Armada, 1989

Frank Stella, The Shark Massacre, 1988

Yukinori Yanagi, Bonsai Corner 96, 1991

We had lunch in the Museum Cafe on the second floor with views of the mountains and the sea.  Before leaving for the Valley Gallery, a visitor offered to take our photo behind this metal sculpture by an artist unfortunately unknown to me.

• Valley Gallery

Per the museum’s brochure:

Valley Gallery consists of a structure designed by Tadao Ando, built along a valley, which is generally considered a boundary or a sanctuary, and connected to the surrounding space. 

 

Installed both inside and outside the gallery is Narcissus Garden, a monumental work by Yayoi Kusama….The repetition of the reflective balls that show the surrounding landscape and spectators makes each of us feel as if we were being unified with nature as a life form and infinitely expanding.

Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden, 1966/2022

 

  

 

 

Picking up on the idea of the valley as sanctuary, and a reference to the environmental damage caused by industrial activities on Naoshima and its sister island, Teshima, is this work.

Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Slag Buddha 88 – Eighty-eight Buddha Statues Created Using Slag from industrial waste at Teshima, 2006/2022

• Lee Ufan Museum

No photos of the interior are allowed. The architecture is by Tadao Ando.  The sculptures are by Korean artist Lee Ufan.

 

Lee Ufan, Relatum-Point, Line, Plane, 2010

Detail 

Lee Ufan, Port vers l'infini, 2019 
 

Chichu Art Museum 

Our last stop of the day was Chichu Art Museum, and again, unfortunately, no interior photos were allowed, so as noted above, I pulled some from Benesse art site and This Paper.

From the museum brochure:

Chichu Art Museum was constructed in 2004 as a site rethinking the relationship between nature and people.  The museum was built mainly underground to avoid affecting the beautiful natural scenery of the Seto Inland Sea.  Artworks by Claude Monet, James Turrell, and Walter De Maria are on permanent display in this building designed by Tadao Ando.  Despite being primarily subterranean, the museum lets in an abundance of natural light that changes the appearance of the artwork and the ambience of the space itself with the passage of time, throughout the day and all along the four seasons of the year.

Tadao Ando, the site, the garden, and the museum, 2004 

 

 

From the museum brochure:

The main construction materials in the architecture of Tadao Ando are concrete, steel, glass, and wood.  Chichu Art Museum incorporates these four materials in a design that is extremely reduced.  Ando limited the architecture only to an underground structure and refused to have an exterior design rising out of the ground.

Claude Monet, Water Lily Pond, 1915-26 (center), Water Lilies, 1914-17 (right), and Water Lilies, Cluster of Grass, 1914-17 (left)

Claude Monet, another view of the same room

James Turrell, Afrum Pale Blue, 1968

James Turrell, Open Field, 2000

James Turrell, Open Sky, 2004

Walter De Maria, Time, Timeless, No Time, 2004 

• Bar Queens-Q

Dinner and drinks were at Bar Queens-Q, which serves a mean cocktail and a kick-ass chicken with rice done in a Crock-Pot, of all things.  A good selection of sake too.  

On the walk home we passed this sculpture by Sou Fujimoto, whose architectural models we'd seen at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.  It is said to be reminiscent of a floating island, the 28th of Naoshima's 27, and is comprised of approximately 250 stainless steel mesh triangles.  You can go inside.  It's beautiful by day, but even more so by night.

Sou Fujimoto, Naoshima Pavilion, 2015

 

 

 

Keep it real!

Marilyn