Just Blend In

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I Love Yu bathouse.

It was early when I set out for the Japanese island of Naoshima. So, when I boarded the morning ferry from the port town of Uno, I did not notice the sun, comparatively tardy, begin its ascent.

Tiny Naoshima, located in Japan’s Inland Sea, has, over the past two decades, reinvented itself from a struggling fishing community to a world-famous contemporary art site. The island is home to museums that are incredible works of architecture, such as the Tadao Ando-designed Chichu, which, lit only by natural light, blends harmoniously into its natural surroundings; abandoned houses and shrines that have been converted into art installations; public sculptures such as a giant yellow polkadot pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama; sandy beaches, and sunny weather.

I had sat on the sun deck on the ferry and watched as the surrounding islands and calm Inland Sea unfolded. Arriving on Naoshima, I hopped on a borrowed bicycle and started to make my way around the five-square-mile island.

I cycled from art installation to museum; through back alleys and through woods. High on art and creativity, it never once crossed my mind to cover my bare arms or to put a little cream on the backs of my hands that lay flat on the handlebars, as if in an offering to the sun gods.

In the early evening, after hours of cycling and several loops of the island, I came to my final destination: a public bathhouse called I Love Yu (a play on words: the name uses the character for hot water, which is pronounced “you.”) The bathhouse, or “sento,” is itself a work of art, maniacally filled with kitschy objects accumulated on artist Shinro Ohtake’s travels; such as an aircraft cockpit, tile murals, and an elephant statue culled from a Thai sex museum.

There, surrounded by colourful chaos, I stripped out of my clothes only to immediately hold up a towel to cover myself back up.

Having travelled extensively in Japan, and visited many bathhouses, I had long ago shaken any shyness at public nudity. That was not the problem. The problem was the fiery shade of my arms that burned so bright I thought I could hear them sizzle. My chest and shoulders were a ludicrous criss-cross pattern of reds and whites. I was embarrassed.

I glanced around at the other bathers: young women stretched out on a tile floor that featured a collage of erotic art; old women on yellow stools scrubbing themselves at the faucets. I realised that none of them showed any interest in looking at me.

I shrugged off my little towel and began to wash. Making my way over to the steaming hot bath I thought to myself that, with my oddly placed red and white stripes, I blended into to the jumble of the bathhouse. I fit right in.

I carefully slid into the boiling water, but submerged my body only up to where the redness and prickling pain began.

The next morning I had never been happier to see rain.

I Love Yu.

The Art Islands of the Inland Sea

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Note: Around twenty years ago the small fishing islands of the Japanese Inland Sea, who were faced with an aging population, declining birthrate and disappearing industry, caught the attention of the art-loving billionaire chairman of the Benesse Corporation, Soichiro Fukutake. Fukutake’s donations helped revitalise the economy of the islands (particularly Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima) by turning them into contemporary art centres.

Throughout the islands, you will find eclectic artworks by Japanese and foreign artists in museums, abandoned houses and in the open air. The art and architecture blends harmoniously with nature on these mellow islands and demand to be experienced rather than just looked at.

Twelve islands are currently taking part in the Setouchi Triennale International Art Festival.

The Inland Sea

“Rather than art, it would be more fitting to discuss how each individual being perceives richness and fulfillment before they leave this fleeting mortal world. This perception is an intensely personal process that involves each person thinking for him or herself.”

— Fram Kitagawa; General Director of Setouchi Triennale 2010 and 2013

Visiting the art islands of the Inland Sea was an intensely personal experience. Few of the artworks are mere things to look at, hung on a museum wall. Instead they were to be to be experienced; to enter, to physically connect with.

At Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima I slipped off my shoes and donned the provided slippers to view, first, Monet’s water lily paintings from the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, stepping across an inlaid floor of small cubes of white Carrara marble in a room where the walls are rounded so as to wrap around me, natural light blinking in from above. Chichu, designed by Tadao Ando, is built entirely underground and lit only by the natural light that comes in through the skylights and courtyards.

In slippers again, I walked towards and into James Turrell’s blue lights, and up and down the staircase of Walter de Maria’s Time/Timeless/No Time granite-and-gold leaf installation; walking around the piece, viewing from different angles and watching the movement of sun and time change my perspective.

In Naoshima’s Art House Project I wandered through old abandoned houses remade into works of art. At the Minamidera house I found James Turrell again. His house is a piece that requires visitors to enter a pitch dark room and feel along the walls to take a seat at a bench. And then … well, I won’t say as that would ruin the experience.

Haisha by Shinro Ohtake. Part of the Art House Project.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s contribution is a restoration of an Edo period shrine and construction of optical glass staircase linking the main structure to an underground stone chamber, “uniting heaven and earth”. You enter the chamber with a torch and look up at the shrine, and heaven, from below.

Go’o Shrine by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Part of the Art House Project.

At Naoshima Bath “I♥湯” (a play on words: it uses the character for hot water, which is pronounced “yu”) I steamed myself in hot water under the gaze of a massive elephant statue that was salvaged from a Thai sex museum, while surrounded by all manner of kitsch collected on the artist Shinro Ohtake’s travels.

No cameras (obviously) in the bathhouse. This is the exterior.

On Teshima at Les Archives du Coeur, I stood alone in a dark room as a stranger’s heartbeat, recorded in Paris in 2010, thumped in time to a blinking lightbulb.

Christian Boltanski: Les Archives du Coeur

But nowhere felt so intensely personal as Teshima Art Museum. This place, calling itself a museum, designed by Ryue Nishizawa, is shaped like a droplet of water and perched on a hill among terraced rice fields. The museum houses a single artwork, Matrix by Rei Naito. And it’s like nothing I’ve seen — and like nothing at all.

No cameras allowed in the museum. Here it is viewed from a distance.

The winding trail that leads to the museum.

No slippers here, you walk inside barefoot and are advised by a solitary, serene attendant to not step on the small goblets of water that skim across the floor. The water springs from little ping-pong balls placed on the floor, or from the rain that falls through the two large openings in the roof. Again, there is only natural light.

I was alone in the museum with nothing to break my focus on the little puddles breaking into streams that trickle away into the void. The only sound the wind, the birds and, in the distance, the sea. I wondered if this is what meditation feels like; I don’t think I have ever felt so close to absolute stillness. It is an emotional experience and one that is difficult to describe because, essentially, it was a feeling of nothingness. Just a careful contemplation of the something that lies at the point where art, architecture, nature and existence meet, and boundaries fall away. I didn’t want to leave.