Naoshima is a one-of-a-kind Japanese island, but it is also a container of art, stories and visions.

Naoshima sits in the Seto Inland Sea on the southern coast of Kagawa prefecture. Being a cove of modern art museums, architecture, and sculptures already motions its reputation as Japan’s art island. The exemplary architectural works foster troves of artworks and sculptures by revered artists from around the world. They brush against the natural landscape, from the silhouettes of mountain ridges at a distance to the singing of the sea as the mellow laps of the water meet the shore. Artist Yayoi Kusama planted her signature yellow and red pumpkins here. The red pumpkin greets the visitors as they step onto the pier while the yellow one, which returned after having been swept away by the typhoon, symbolises the island’s grit.

Naoshima’s eponym alludes to the collective vision of Tetsuhiko Fukutake, the founding president of Fukutake Publishing, who aspired to create a place in the Seto Inland Sea where children from all over the world could gather and Chikatsugu Miyake, then incumbent mayor of Naoshima, who dreamt of developing a cultural and educational area on the island. They met in 1985 in Naoshima and manifested their mutual desire to dedicate such an area on the island through the opening of the Tadao Ando-designed Benesse House Museum in 1992. Since then, the dream of reuniting all the people who love art has grown steadily. From 2004 to 2016, the other museums on the island were inaugurated: the Chichu Art Museum, the Inujima Seirensho Museum, Lee Ufan, Tadao Ando, to name a few and the island has hosted the Setouchi Triennale as well as other relevant exhibitions.

Slowly, visitors of Naoshima Island interpret the enclave as a sort of piece of creative non-fiction. They go for a walk and note how the Valley Gallery resembles a shrine that is nestled in the heart of greenery. They take a peek at the art exhibited inside the Seaside Gallery and end up at the large apertures facing the ocean. They must, without exception, mark the Ando-architected creations on their maps. First, they should savour the natural skylights adorning the sometimes-open ceilings of the Brutalist Chichu Art Museum. Then, they should stroll around the fruitful collaboration between Ando and artist Lee Ufan, the semi-buried structure surrounded by hills that has housed paintings and sculptures by Lee from the 1970’s.

Winding gently down from art exploration might encourage the visitors to drop by I Love Yu, a public bathhouse and art space created by artist Shinro Ohtake. Here, they can marvel at the art-filled interior and exterior with the painted glass ceiling, erotic images for the bath’s tiles, large murals depicting female divers, an elephant sculpture towering over the visitors, and a kaleidoscope of collages, paintings, posters, video displays, and painted ceramics in the changing rooms, toilets, and entrance. After a bath, Benesse House awaits their return to one, or all, of its four accommodations – at the museum, on a hill, at the park, or by the beach – that gently nudge them on to keep exploring the island.

The island of Naoshima is a container of wonders, to be discovered one after the other. Yet another story within a story, the last in this intense issue, with which I want to bid farewell to you, my affectionate reader. I thank you for the journey we have shared together in discovering meta-fiction and the Thousand and One Nights. I hope I have prompted you to reflect on our being containers in our turn, containers of emotions, desires and fragments of the infinite.