A pumpkin with black dots and as tall as a man rests on a jetty, behind that one hears the sound of the sea. When a bus stops near the pumpkin, small groups of squealing tourists flock to the jetty and pose next to the pumpkin, and then the clicking of their cameras echoes through the small bay. The sculpture, a work by Yayoi Kusama, the grande dame of contemporary Japanese art, is the landmark of Naoshima, Japan's art island. Dots are her trademark; since appearing to her in a vision as a child, Kusama covers objects, bodies, sculptures, or Louis Vuitton handbags with dots.

Those who want to see art in Japan travel to Tokyo. Or to Naoshima. The island is only fifteen square kilometers in size, and it is the antithesis to the humming and flashing metropolis: traditional Japanese buildings, narrow alleyways, fishing boats docked in the harbor. The only thing that indicates that the art world has found its way here are a couple of hip restaurants. Sculptures by artists such as Walter De Maria or Niki de Saint Phalle are located along the coast lined with beaches of yellow sand. Several museums present contemporary art. Artists exhibit their works in vacant buildings in the island's settlements.

Benesse Holding, a Japanese consortium that also publishes textbooks, began transforming the sleepy island into a venue for art and architecture in the eighties. The transformation meanwhile even includes neighboring islands: several years ago, Benesse had a building constructed for Boltanski's Les Archives de Coeur on Teshima. The artist recorded the heartbeats of people throughout the world; visitors can listen to the recordings, record their own heartbeat, and add them to the archive.

On Naoshima itself it is the architectural works that are the most striking. Upon leaving the ferry, one walks through a filigree hall. A large, flat roof rests on thin, symmetrically arranged white columns; a glass cube situated in the center serves as a waiting area with a restaurant and souvenir shop. The hall was designed by the architect duo Sanaa. Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima have their studio in Tokyo; it was on their drawing board that the New Museum in New York originated. Yet the real star on the island is Tadao Ando. Once an autodidact with a small studio in Osaka, he is now one of the most important contemporary architects. In his designs, he almost exclusively uses exposed concrete slabs the size of Japanese tatami floor mats and with indentations that come about during installation. Ando does not cover them with plaster; they have become his signature.

The architect has created several museums for the art island, for instance the Benesse House Museum with an integrated hotel that houses the consortium's collection. Artists such as Donald Judd, Jackson Pollock, Bruce Nauman, or Richard Long are on the list; one dines with Andy Warhol's Flowers in the plush restaurant. More fascinating for Western tourists are the works by the Japanese artists represented in the collection, such as Yukinori Yanagi's The World Flag Ant Farm from 1990. For this installation, he interconnected Plexiglas boxes filled with colored sand in the form of different national flags, through which the insects forged labyrinthine paths. The highlight is the presentation of Hiroshi Sugimoto's series Time Exposed with several photographs taken between 1980 and 1997. Equipped with a large-format camera, the artist traveled to different countries and took black-and-white photographs of the sea with exposure times of up to three hours. The horizon divides the images directly in the middle; subtle variations only come about as the result of the exposure times. Viewing these photographs on the museum's terrace, where they hang on concrete walls between which an opening reveals the sea, is a spiritual experience.

One can experience how wonderful the symbiosis between architecture and art can be in the Chichu Art Museum built by Tadao Ando in 2004. Only three artists are represented in this museum situated under several hills. Daylight enters through openings on the surface and interacts with the works, whose subject is light. The centerpiece is the Claude Monet Space entirely in white--even the museum attendants are dressed in white, and visitors slip on white slippers before entering the space. On display here are water-lily paintings from Monet's late work in which he deals with motifs from his garden in Giverny, which, by the way, has been recreated in front of the museum.

Another space contains an enormous black sphere and golden steles by Walter De Maria. Finally, based on three works from different working phases, visitors can trace James Turrell's examination of light. They enter Open Field from his Aperture Series: what is initially perceived as a luminescent blue rectangle on the wall turns out to be an illuminated space. A very similar work from this series can be viewed in a small hall in the middle of a settlement in Naoshima also built by Ando. Visitors first sit ten minutes in the dark until their eyes become accustomed to the environment and discover the luminous rectangle, behind which a hollow space is also concealed. Naoshima is a huge playground for art enthusiasts: include it by all means in your plans for your next visit to Japan, and don't forget the souvenir photograph next to the pumpkin.