Naoshima
town in Kagawa district, Kagawa prefecture, Japan
Naoshima (直島, Naoshima) is an island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, part of Kagawa Prefecture. The island is best known for its many contemporary art installations and museums. The Town of Naoshima (直島町, Naoshima-chō) administers Naoshima and 26 smaller islands nearby. As of 2020, the town has an estimated population of 3,026 and a density of 210 persons per km2. The total area is 14.22 km2.
Naoshima Island is known for its many contemporary art museums. For example, the Chichu Art Museum (literally, "in the earth") houses a number of site-specific installations by James Turrell, Walter De Maria, and paintings by Claude Monet. Designed by Tadao Ando, it is located on one of the highest points of the island, and various exhibits and facets of the museum's architecture take advantage of its commanding view. Another contemporary museum (and hotel) is Benesse House, also by Ando. Another is the Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum, with an outdoor sculpture garden, and a third is the James Bond museum, inspired by the island's use as one of the settings for the 2002 Bond novel The Man with the Red Tattoo by Raymond Benson.
“Naoshima” enters the record as town in Kagawa district, Kagawa prefecture, Japan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Naoshima, town and Kagawa can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Naoshima” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Naoshima, town and Kagawa provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1350060. VIAF identifies the subject as 123601411. The Library of Congress control number is nr91009557. Authority coordinates are 34.460, 133.996. 3 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 2002.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Naoshima” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.