Okayama · Seto Inland SeaNo.593★★Open in map →
Inujima
— Island where a copper refinery became a museum
A copper refinery worked on this small island and then stopped. Its slag-brick ruins now hold an art museum that runs on sunlight and ground heat, and the village behind it keeps galleries inside old houses. Everything is on foot.
- FromSaidaiji Station
- ~45 minBus, then a short ferry
- Get off atInujima Port (ferry from Hoden)
- From there
- Inujima
The sweet spot
Inujima belongs to the Setouchi art circuit and has been photographed steadily since the museum opened, so it is not an undiscovered island. What it has instead is scale and rhythm. It is small enough to cross on foot, and the boat timetable empties it between sailings, so a crowd arrives, spreads thin along one shoreline path, and leaves together.
Where it is
14 more notes in Okayama · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Inujima Ticket Centerthe low building by the pier where the island pass is checked before anything else
- Inujima Seirensho Art Museumgalleries cut into the refinery shell, lit and tempered without machinery
- The refinery groundskarami-brick walls left standing outside the galleries, open to wander at your own pace
- Inujima Art House Projectgalleries slipped into houses and gaps in the village, laid out by the architect Kazuyo Sejima
How to actually get there
- Okayama Station → Saidaiji Station on the JR Ako Line.
- Saidaiji Station → Nishi-Hoden by bus, about thirty minutes; the service runs only on days the refinery museum opens.
- Walk down to Hoden Port and take the ferry across, about ten minutes.
- Land at Inujima Port, check in at the ticket centre, and go on foot from there.
- Bus from Saidaiji, then the ferry
- Okayama Station → Saidaiji Station on the JR Ako Line, then the bus out to Nishi-Hoden, then the short crossing. Roughly three quarters of an hour once you are on the bus. The mainland bus runs only on days the refinery museum opens, which makes the museum calendar the first thing to check, ahead of the boat times.
- Last boat back to Hoden
- The crossing is short but the timetable is not continuous, and the bus waiting on the mainland side keeps to the same restricted days. Note your return sailing when you land rather than at the end of the afternoon: there is no second way off the island.
About the place
Inujima lies off the coast east of Okayama city, close enough that the crossing is over before you have settled into a seat. The refinery stood at the south-eastern end, and what remains of it has not been tidied away: walls of karami brick, the dark slag left behind by smelting, standing where the works fell quiet. The museum built inside that shell takes no shortcuts with machinery. Sunlight, ground heat and planted water move the air and clean it, so the galleries shift with the weather outside rather than against it. The village sits a few minutes north, and nothing on the island runs on wheels.
How to enjoy it
Tour departures run from nine in the morning through to late afternoon and each takes about forty-five minutes, so book a slot that leaves the middle of the day free for the village. Take the refinery first and the village galleries afterwards, which is the order the island's own route follows. What ends the day here is the last boat, not the last gallery.
Background & history
Copper smelting was moved out to Inujima early in the twentieth century, away from the mainland and its smoke. The works ran for only about ten years before the copper price collapsed, the furnaces went cold and the island went quiet again. The ruins then stood for decades with nothing done to them. In 2008 the shell reopened as the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, designed by Hiroshi Sambuichi around the building's own light and airflow, holding work by Yukinori Yanagi drawn from the writer Yukio Mishima's quarrel with Japan's modernisation.
Before you go
- Cash
- One pass covers the refinery museum and the village galleries together, and it costs less booked online in advance than bought at the window on the day. Sort it before you travel rather than at the pier.
- Before you go
- The refinery museum is now seen on a timed guided tour rather than at your own pace, with fixed departures through the day, narration in Japanese and English text to read alongside it. A slot has to be booked. The outdoor grounds and the village galleries are still yours to wander freely.
- Another way
- Ferries also connect Inujima with Naoshima and with Uno Port, three round trips a day, which makes the island a stop on an art-island route rather than a there-and-back trip from Okayama.
- After you get off
- The pier, the ticket centre and the village all sit within a few minutes of one another on the north shore. The refinery is at the far south-eastern end, under ten minutes along the shore path. There are no cars on Inujima, so every distance here is a walking one.