There is an art festival on seven of the islands in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, The Setouichi Festival (HERE). I recently spent three days there as a photographer on a frantic press trip with Vicente Guttierrez, a writer from Tokyo and the editor of Papersky’s International Edition (HERE).

The islands are little versions of Japan within Japan. Discrete microcosms of one possible future the nation as a whole may be approaching – a future generated by a long term economic downtown and a declining, aging population. One island, Inujima, now has only 50 residents, down from 3000 a half century ago. Inujima also has no convenience store, perhaps the most symbolic sign of decline and decay in Japan. Vicente accurately dubbed the islands “haikyo (ruins) in progress.” Abandoned buildings, homes, stores, and temples dot the islands, often completely overgrown by vines and weeds. The Haikyo appear so randomly it feels as though the island as a whole might one day be suddenly consumed by nature and disappear under a matted blanket of green stuff.

To combat the decline an art festival has been created to attract visitors and to reposition the islands – semantically, symbolically, semiotically – as valuable artful destinations. Curator Fram Kitagawa is responsible for this repositioning. This festival is his latest attempt to revive living folk culture with contemporary art. It’s hard to measure his success, but we tried. We spent the three days looking at some of the widely dispersed art (James Turrell’s arthouse, and the endless SANAA structures were good), but mostly we spent the time talking to locals; a lemon farmer on Teshima, young employee’s of the festival, a monk and workman on Ogijima, and the owner of a hotel on Naoshima. Mostly they were oblivious to the art permeating their islands. It seemed the larger the island the less the locals cared. It was immensely interesting to see the relationship between art made to help local people and how those local people viewed the art itself. Complete write up and photos should be up on Papersky International Blog soon.

Blue photo taken from the top of Ogijima.