Kagawa · NaoshimaNo.624★★★Open in map →
Benesse House Museum
The first museum built on Naoshima, set into the south coast as gallery and hotel in one concrete building. Works stand outside it along the shore and on an old pier, where anyone walking the coast road can see them.
- FromTakamatsu Port
- ~1 hr 30 minFerry, then island bus
- Get off atTsutsujiso bus stop (Naoshima Town Bus)
- From there
- Benesse House Museum
Where it is
25 more notes in Kagawa · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Yellow PumpkinKusama's spotted gourd on an old pier by the beach, remade after a typhoon, reachable without a ticket
- Benesse House Museumthe original building, gallery below and hotel above, with works commissioned for the rooms they stand in
- The shore path workssculptures set on the lawn and among the rocks between the museum and the coast road
- Lee Ufan Museuma half-buried gallery in the valley between hill and sea, one artist and one architect
- Chichu Art Museuman underground building lit only from above, holding Monet, Turrell and De Maria
How to actually get there
- Takamatsu Port → Miyanoura, Naoshima (Shikoku Kisen ferry, about 1 hr).
- Miyanoura → Tsutsujiso (Naoshima town bus, via Nokyo-mae and Yakuba-mae).
- Tsutsujiso → Benesse House Museum (free Benesse shuttle, or about 10 min on foot up the coast road).
- Ferry from Takamatsu, then the island bus
- Takamatsu Port →(Shikoku Kisen ferry, about an hour, 680 yen)→ Miyanoura. The Naoshima town bus runs Miyanoura – Nokyo-mae – Yakuba-mae – Tsutsujiso, and from Tsutsujiso the free Benesse shuttle carries on to the museum. Sailings are spread across the day rather than frequent, and the operator takes no reservations, so allow time at the ticket window.
- Back to Takamatsu
- Ferries leave Miyanoura for Takamatsu through the day, with the last crossing in the late afternoon and a faster boat later in the evening. Both the shuttle and the town bus stop running well before the boats do, so fix the return leg before you start walking west along the coast.
About the place
Naoshima is a small island in the Seto Inland Sea, closer to the Okayama shore than to the Kagawa mainland it belongs to, with industry at one end and art at the other. Benesse House sits on the south coast, a concrete building set into the hillside that works as a museum on its lower floors and a hotel above them. The art does not stop at the walls. Pieces stand on the lawn, along the shore path and on an old pier below, and anyone walking the coast road goes past them without a ticket. Tadao Ando designed it, and went on to design most of what came afterwards.
How to enjoy it
The museum runs 8:00 to 21:00 and is open daily apart from short maintenance closures (one is set for 12–18 January 2027), which makes it both the earliest and the latest thing on the island. Chichu keeps ordinary hours, closes on Mondays and needs a timed reservation booked in advance, so fix that first and build the day around it. The free Benesse shuttle links Tsutsujiso, this museum, Lee Ufan and Chichu; the town bus only reaches Tsutsujiso.
Background & history
Benesse and the town of Naoshima began working together at the south end of the island with a campsite laid out to a plan by Tadao Ando. Benesse House followed in 1992, putting a museum and a hotel under one roof. The Art House Project then started turning empty houses in the village of Honmura into permanent installations, and in 2004 the Chichu Art Museum opened along the same coast, built almost entirely underground. Yayoi Kusama's yellow pumpkin has stood on the old pier below the museum since the nineties; a typhoon carried it off, and it was made again.
Before you go
- Cash
- From Uno on the Okayama side the crossing is 370 yen and takes about twenty minutes, which is the cheaper way in if you are coming down the Sanyo line. Museum tickets cost less booked online than paid at the door, and Chichu charges more at weekends than on weekdays. Entry is free for children of fifteen and under at both.
- Before you go
- Chichu closes on Mondays, and on the following day when a Monday falls on a public holiday. Rough weather stops the ferries long before it stops anything on land, so the crossing is the part of the plan to check first.
- Another way
- Uno Port is reached from Okayama by the JR Uno Line and is the usual way in for anyone arriving by Shinkansen. A passenger boat also runs from Uno to Honmura on the island's east side, which lands you at the Art House Project rather than at the main port.
- After you get off
- From Tsutsujiso the museum is about ten minutes on foot up the coast road, or one stop on the free Benesse shuttle. The pumpkin and the beach lie below the road at the bottom of that walk, so it is worth going on foot in at least one direction.