直島

The ferry from Miyanoura-ko arrives past a red-and-green lighthouse, and the first thing one notices is not art but the quiet of a working harbor. The yellow dotted pumpkin by Kusama Yayoi sits at the end of a breakwater as if it had always been there, indifferent to the cameras. Beyond it, the hills are still the granite hills of an industrial island — the Mitsubishi smelter has shaped Naoshima far longer than the museums have, and that older weight is part of what keeps the place from tipping into spectacle.

Walking inland toward Honmura, the lanes narrow between old wooden houses, some of them now opened as the Ie Project, others simply lived in. A net dries by a doorway; somewhere further down, hamachi and nori are still the work of the sea rather than a souvenir. The Chichu Museum is dug into the southern ridge, but one reaches it through the same single-lane road that the postal van uses. Art and errand share the asphalt.

Evenings settle slowly. Day visitors thin out with the last ferries to Takamatsu and Uno, and the island returns to its smaller self — Goo Shrine on its slope, the small lights of the village, the Seto Inland Sea going dark in stages. What distinguishes Naoshima from the other islands it sits among is this layering: a smelting town, a fishing town, and a contemporary art town occupying the same coast without quite resolving into one thing. The longer one stays, the more the seams show, and the more interesting they become.