From a post-industrial wasteland to an art-filled utopia, the story of Japan’s art islands in the Seto Inland Sea is one of redemption.
There are three islands to be exact: Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima, all of which were on the brink of being damaged beyond repair. Naoshima and Inujima were left barren from a booming but destructive copper smelting industry, while Teshima was buried under nearly a million tonnes of illegally dumped toxic waste. That is until Japanese billionaire Soichiro Fukutake stepped in. Horrified by the destruction—namely due to the reckless environmental damage caused by corporations—on the formerly pristine islands, Fukutake took it upon himself to give them a new lease on life, saying in a statement that he “decided to use art to fight against what society had done” while restoring the Shinto values of honouring and finding harmony with nature.
