Inujima

It is only 2.2km away from Okayama, and you will find it which is floating in offshore of there. This small island is about 4km in circumference, and it takes 25 minutes from Teshima island.
From long time ago, as we can find granite in good quality, this place was known as a stone quarry and the wall for the castles and construction for the ports in all over Japan are sent from Inujima.
Today, we find many lakes and caves in this island because they have quarried too much stones until the natural features were changed. So the original features are unknown now.
After the quarry business became sluggish, they also built a copper refinery.
At that time, there were 4,000 to 5,000 people lived this small island temporarily, but because of the smoke pollution and as they lost in competition between with other industries, they stop the copper refinery, and people left the island. Today, the population is only 47 in this island.
In 2001, as like Naoshima, Benesse also started to restore the island by "Inujima Art House Project", and first of all, they bought the ruined copper refinery.
It was once the source of pollution by toxic smoke, but the refinery has been restored by natural energy and arts by keeping passed negative legacy. It became Inujima Seirensho Art Museum in 2008. (Seireisho=copper refinery)
The architect of this museum is Hiroshi Sambuichi who also designed "Naoshima Hall", a new community centre In Naoshima and there, the works created by Yukinori Yaagi who used Yukio Mishima as a motif.
In the village, we can see the artworks of young and energetic artists like Naoshima as part of Inujima Art House project. 
They worked out in different solution for recreating the new sights from original ones comparing to Naoshima, so it is interesting to see the difference between two islands.

  

Related blogs:
- Setouchi triennale : The art on the Seto sea 
- Setouchi Triennale 2019: International Art Festival in Japan
- The Art of the Seto Sea: the success of the Setouchi Triennale for this first spring session 2019