History
Kagawa is Japan’s smallest prefecture by area, and has responded to that fact not with any sense of diminishment but by concentrating its identity into a couple of things it does more intensely than anywhere else — udon noodles, and, more recently, art.
Kagawa and the wider world
Starting in the 1990s, the Fukutake Foundation (now Benesse Holdings) began a deliberate, long-term project to bring world-class contemporary art to Naoshima and several neighboring islands in the Seto Inland Sea — commissioning the architect Tadao Ando to design museum buildings built partly underground to preserve the islands’ landscapes, and installing permanent works by international artists including James Turrell and a dedicated gallery for a series of Claude Monet water lily paintings. What began as a revitalization effort for small, depopulating fishing islands has become one of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary art destinations in the world, drawing visitors and critics specifically for the art rather than any more conventional tourist draw — a genuinely unusual trajectory for a former Seto Inland Sea backwater.
Neighbors: Kagawa and the rest of Shikoku
Kotohira-gu, one of Shikoku’s most significant pilgrimage sites, draws visitors from across the island independent of the more famous 88-temple Shikoku Henro circuit that passes through neighboring Tokushima, Ehime, and Kochi — Kagawa’s own religious pull runs in parallel to, rather than as part of, that shared island-wide pilgrimage tradition.
Getting there and getting around
Takamatsu is reached from Okayama by direct limited express train in about an hour, crossing the Seto Ohashi Bridge. Naoshima is a short ferry ride from Takamatsu port or from Uno, on the Okayama side.
