Travelling to Teshima requires a certain amount of forethought. The ferry or high-speed boat travels between Uno Port (in Okayama) and Tonosho Port (on Shodoshima) seven times a day; one missed departure means a two-hour wait for the next. If departing from Naoshima, the boat that stops at Teshima only operates twice a day.
In other words, Teshima is not the kind of place one visits on a whim. It receives considerably fewer visitors compared to its neighbour Naoshima; this is likely because it’s not only difficult to get to and has fewer artworks overall, but also requires waiting for extremely infrequent buses (seven of them a day, operating every other hour), renting a bicycle (less fun than it sounds if it’s raining), or walking around the island (getting to the main museum, for example, is a 20-minute uphill walk from one of the ports).
Why make the effort to visit Teshima, given all of these constraints? Is the art worth the time, the money, the frictions of multiple forms of transport? Many would say no. But Teshima’s audience is a self-selecting crowd. Along with Naoshima, Echigo, and other remote art sites, Teshima represents what critic Thu Huong-Ha has called “the allure of inconvenient art.” For such people, the effort of getting there is the entire point.
A background to Teshima
Teshima’s name translates to “Rich Island,” a nod to the abundance of natural resources on an island scarcely larger than the entirety of Los Angeles Airport. Around 700 people live here; the island has been inhabited for at least 14,000 years, if not longer, often functioning as a trade stop in the Seto Inland Sea. It is fed by the waters of Karato spring, swathed in forests of Itajii evergreens and sawtooth oak interspersed by rice terraces and the occasional cluster of houses. In the warm, mild climate of the Seto Inland Sea, farmers grow rice, but also citruses (lemons and mikan), strawberries, olives, and vegetables of all kinds. The terraces practically glow in autumn sunshine, and when it rains in winter, the hills are half-shrouded in mist and cloud.
Teshima has become synonymous with the phrase “art island” along with nearby Naoshima. But for decades, it was Japan’s poster child for the country’s worst case of illegal dumping of industrial waste. Starting in 1975, the deceptively-named Teshima Comprehensive Tourism Development would unload close to a million tons of waste over several years. Huge quantities of pulp, wood chips, oil, shredded car tyres, batteries, dioxin and PCBs — all of it went to Teshima despite the islanders’ objections, all of it sanctioned by the Kagawa Prefectural Government. This decimated Teshima’s agricultural and fishing industries for years; no consumer would touch fish caught in the surrounding waters, nor vegetables grown on the island.
Activist Shozo Aki and hundreds of islanders began a protracted campaign against the industrial waste disposal business. It took 25 years to see some semblance of justice; thousands of inhabitants deserted the island in the intervening years. In 1990, local police finally arrested Sosuke Matsuura, the CEO of Teshima Tourism, although he walked away with a small fine and a short suspended prison sentence. The residents of Teshima filed a damage suit against the company, and won their case in late 1996.
In 2000, the residents reached an accord with the prefectural government on a plan to clean up the waste. The industrial waste would be sent to Naoshima, treated, incinerated, and transformed into slag at a new furnace, and then used as aggregate in concrete. (A small amount of this slag has been turned into “Slag Buddha 88,” an artwork by Tsuyoshi Ozawa in the Valley Gallery on Naoshima.) The Teshima incident became a landmark case for environmental activists across Japan, spurring major changes in waste disposal laws and larger fines for illegal dumping. The last load of waste from Teshima left the island in late March 2017.
Becoming an art island
In 2004, the Kagawa prefectural government began to consider the idea of creating their own regional art festival based on ties to locally-born figures such as Isamu Noguchi and Kenzo Tange. Large-scale regional art festivals such as the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale had begun emerging across Japan; art tourism seemed like a productive approach to rural revitalisation. This led to talks with the Fukutake Foundation, whose investments in cultural projects on Naoshima during the 80s and 90s had led to measurable growth and development on the island. Its director, billionaire Soichiro Fukutake, was a close friend and collaborator of Fram Kitagawa, the founder and director of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. Naturally, Kitagawa was enlisted in producing the festival that would eventually become the Setouchi International Art Triennale.
The first Setouchi Triennale took place in 2010, coinciding with the opening of the Teshima Art Museum, which was designed by Ryue Nishizawa and houses Matrix by artist Rei Naito. This was, so to speak, Teshima’s official inauguration into the art islands. Other artworks have been installed installed over the subsequent years, including Christian Boltanski’s Les Archives du Cœur and La forêt des murmures in 2008 and 2016 respectively, Tadanori Yokoo and Yuko Nagayama’s Teshima Yokoo House in 2013, and Shinro Ohtake’s Needle Factory in 2016. Naoshima still continues to draw the highest number of visitors out of all the art islands (around 300,000 per year), but Teshima manages about half that number — not bad for an island with seven buses a day.
What makes an art island?
However, it takes more than art installations for a place to become an “art island.” As academic Meng Qu has observed in his ethnographic studies of the art islands, art that is “designed with the sole purpose of attracting tourists — rather than being rooted within community — will only end up as a ‘borrowed art exhibit on borrowed land.’” The art is a significant draw for visitors, but what makes Teshima attractive and worth visiting again (or even migrating there) is everything else outside the ‘main’ art facilities.
Spurred by the inflow of tourists, migrants to Teshima have started new businesses around the island, such as the Lemon Hotel, which is closely linked to the island’s lemon planting culture, and the Usaginigen, a renovated warehouse used for performance art and community theatre. These new initiatives make efforts to cater to islanders as well as tourists, and engage directly with place and community. Along with existing businesses run by island residents, they help contribute to the sense of place and identity that makes Teshima itself, rather than a convenient (and interchangeable) base for outsider art based on elite art practices.
Teshima is likely to be a one-off, once-in-a-lifetime visit for most people. But the island does merit repeat visits — not only to experience the Teshima Art Museum in other seasons and light conditions, but also to slow down and take in the landscape of Teshima. The museum and other artworks may have made Teshima an “official” art island in the eyes of the world, but to the people who live there, the island itself is an artwork. All anyone has to do is open their eyes, and look around them.