Explore the Relationship between History, Nature, and Modern Art on Inujima with a Half-Day Tour by Chartered Boat

Board a Chartered Boat to Sail to Inujima, the Hidden Gem of the Seto Inland Sea’s Art Islands

The small island of Inujima can be found in the Seto Inland Sea, just to the north of Naoshima and Teshima. With those two islands, it shares the proud artistic legacy created by Benesse Art Site Naoshima, which promoted the creation of art museums and art installations as a means of revitalizing the Setouchi region. Inujima is also part of the Setouchi Triennale, an internationally-renowned art festival that began in 2010. The art found on Inujima reflects the island’s industrial past as well as its unique local culture and traditional architecture, while also looking forward to questions about its future.

While most visitors use local ferries to travel the Seto Inland Sea, sailing to smaller islands like Inujima are infrequent. That is why this exclusive Wabunka half-day art tour includes transport by chartered boat. From the moment you meet your interpreter-guide at Uno Port or Miyaura Port and step onboard, you will know that you have made the right decision. Cruising smoothly over the azure waters on your very own boat will put you in just the right mindset to explore the island’s local community and modern art museums.

Connecting Art with Community, Tradition, and Sustainable Energy on Inujima

For such a small place, tiny Inujima, which has made significant contributions to Japanese history, with the high-grade granite of its stone quarries found in the walls of castles in Tokyo, Osaka, and Okayama. As Japan rapidly modernized and industrialized from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, Inujima became a center of copper production, with its smelters drawing in workers that swelled the population to as high as 5,000 people at its peak.

These days, the island’s residents number less than 50, most of them elderly. Most dwell in a single village where narrow alleys divide the houses, many of which are vacant now, filled only with the echoes of days past. When Benesse extended its development of Setouchi art museums and installations to Inujima starting, artists and architects focused on restoring and reinterpreting the island’s historic buildings to celebrate its unique community while looking to the future through recycling and the use of natural energy sources.

Inujima Seirensho Art Museum: Finding Beauty and Promise in a Former Copper Refinery

After your boat arrives on Inujima, you and your guide will take a walk through some of the narrow streets of the village that forms the main settlement on the island. Take your time to stop and ask questions along the way as you pass by traditional houses, some still inhabited, others in various states of abandonment and disrepair. Continue on until you reach the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, which can be recognized at a distance by its thin brick chimneys, the tallest structures on the island

This museum was created in 2008 by architect Hiroshi Sambuichi within the remaining structures of a former copper refinery. Reflecting the refinery’s role at the cutting edge of Japan’s rapid period of industrialization, the museum uses modern environmentally-friendly energy sources such as solar power and geothermal heat that look to the future of science, innovation, and sustainability. Artist Yukinori Yanagi has created an expansive work of art that fills much of the museum’s interior and provokes the viewer to look around at the remains of the refinery and ask provocative questions about where Japan is headed.

Art House Project: Integrating Galleries to Re-Inspire a Traditional Island Community

Heading back into the village, your next exploration on Inujima will investigate the Art House Project, an initiative that began in 2010 as a collaboration between artistic director Yuko Hasegawa and architect Kazuyo Sejima. The Art House Project was created to make use of vacant homes to create thought-provoking galleries and installations, incorporating parts of traditional houses as well as modern materials like transparent acrylic glass and reflective aluminum.

Expanded through several years to its current six installations, the Art House Project provides art and architecture that offers fresh perspectives on this island and its people, highlighting the beauty of its past while bringing a fresh new sense of color and vitality. Housed within the structures, you will find intriguing works of art by Japanese, Brazilian, and Danish artists. One particularly evocative installation by artist Yusuke Asai is located on the former site of a stonecutter's house, combining a mosaic-like painting with jagged stone pillars of irregular sizes for an effect that is ancient yet modern, constructed yet organic, growing yet crumbling all at once.

Reflect on an Intimate Encounter with World-Class Art and Architecture Embedded into a Small Island Community

As your boat unmoors and pulls away from Inujima, take some time to reflect on the unusual juxtaposition you have witnessed on this island. In just half a day, you have explored world-class art and architecture crafted by brilliant minds from all around the world embedded into the former homes and industrial buildings of this small island community.

Watching the waves roll by on your way back to Uno Port or Miyaura Port, you may think deeply on many things, such as the relationship between the urban and the rural, between places around the world that rise with history and those that fade away. Maybe you will wonder what kind of art installations will be made about our societies and what survives of them in a century’s time. Whether you discuss your thoughts with your translator-guide or choose to keep them to yourself, the value of a day spent pondering these deep questions will stay with you for a long time after you have left the boat and the island behind.