Yokai Art Museum, Shōdoshima

What is there

The port town of Tonoshō tangled its lanes on purpose, the story goes, against pirates and raiders, and the quarter is still called the Maze Town. The museum, opened in 2018 and run by a local art project, is four old buildings scattered through it within two hundred metres of each other: a kimono merchant’s storehouse, a soy-sauce warehouse, a letterpress print shop and an old house, visited in turn with a map and an audio guide. The first traces the yokai from the old animism to the entertainment of the Edo print shops; the others hold the modern work, more than nine hundred figures and paintings sent in from across the country, many of them from the sculpture prize the museum ran for a decade. Its director is a yokai painter born on the island, and the reception doubles as a yokai bar at night. Every February the town hall hosts YOKAI EXPO, a day of booths, talks and a costume parade, with the finals of the museum’s painting prize.

Why here

Nothing here was recorded in a village; the island’s claim is that travellers and pilgrims have always traded tales at its ports, and that the yokai is still being invented. The first building makes the case: the fearful creatures of the medieval scrolls became the playthings of the Edo picture-books, and the works upstairs are the next turn of the same wheel. For the yokai of the articles this is the place to see what artists make of them now.

Yokai you will meet

• Kappa 河童 — The river child is the figure most often remade by the artists here, from the Edo prints of the first building to the sodas of the bar.

Getting there

Tonoshō Port (ferry from Takamatsu, about an hour). About twenty minutes on foot into the Maze Town; the reception is at building 1.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)