4 Best Sights in Shikoku, Japan

Site-specific installations can be seen from the road leading to this top-class contemporary art museum. Inside, full-length windows illuminate a rotating collection of installation pieces in natural sunlight. The latest addition, about a 10-minute walk away (opposite the Lee Ufan Museum) but covered by the Benesse House Museum ticket, is the stunning Valley Gallery, a Tadao Ando-designed venue that as of March 2022 is the permanent indoor and outdoor home of Yayoi Kusama's sprawling Narcissus Garden installation. The museum is open later than others on the island, so if you only have a day here, save this museum for the evening.

Chichu means "inside the earth," and this museum built into a hillside overlooking Naoshima's south coast lives up to its name. Designed by the internationally recognized architect Tadao Ando, the museum is a work of art in itself. The Chichu exhibits works by Claude Monet, Walter de Maria, James Turrell, and other major artists in natural light. The Monet gallery, which features five paintings from Monet's Water Lilies series, is breathtaking. Buy tickets at the office 50 yards down the road; during busy periods, you may have to wait to enter.

Opened as an extension to the Benesse House complex in 2022, to coincide with Benesse's 30th anniversary on Nasohima, Time Corridors was designed by Tadao Ando (in typically stark concrete style) to house the largely black and white, abstract photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Also here, however, is Sugimoto's striking "Mondrian" glass teahouse installation, set in the middle of a water feature outside the lowly lit museum. You can slowly view the latter from the comfort of the museum's tea room, where tea and a sweet are served as part of the admission fee. As the gallery is only open from 11 am to 3 pm daily and allows a limited number of visitors at a time, it's best to reserve a visiting time in advance.

Yet another Tadao Ando creation, this museum devoted to Lee Ufan, a much-honored painter and sculptor who was born in Korea but then spent much of his career based in Japan, aims to encourage a "slightly out-of-the-ordinary encounter with art, architecture, and nature." Opinions vary about how atypical the experience is, but it's definitely not a passive one. Wear comfortable shoes that are easy to remove; you'll be standing a lot and removing your shoes in parts of the museum.