Artful Shodoshima

A larger island neighbor to Naoshima and Teshima is Shodoshima — another art island in different ways.

The art of monsters

Shodoshima has its share of public art too, although with a fun darker side.

During our walks and bike ride around the island, we noticed a few large art pieces with strikingly fantastic character. Not quite the cerebral abstract works that we enjoyed on Naoshima and Teshima.

We learned that the residents of Shodoshima have an affection for some spooky characters, called yōkai. 

What are yōkai, you may ask. Well:

Most Japanese schoolchildren know the kappa as a trickster who looks like a cross between a frog and a turtle with an indented head. If you’re not careful, it could drag you into the river to drown. The tengu, identifiable by its bright red face and long nose, lurks in the woods. Beware of the tanuki, a supernatural variation of a raccoon dog, for it may make a fool of you when it crosses your path.

These mischievous, occasionally demonic, spooks of traditional Japanese folklore are known collectively as yōkai. They once helped explain mysterious phenomena, such as noises in the night, missing food, or the rains and winds that damaged property. Now, as shared cultural heritage, they are ubiquitous in fairy tales, cartoons, advertising, television and film.

Yet what truly distinguishes the yōkai of Japan is that they are not frozen in classical legend or restricted to a narrow roster of familiar characters. Rather, each generation invents new yōkai, many of them channeling a collective unconscious of present-day anxieties. (source)

For many years, the residents of Shodoshima have hosted an annual an art contest whose theme is yōkai. Many of the products of these contests reside in a little local museum: the Yokai Art Museum.

But they also manifest outside in public art sculptures and murals. As well as what we can’t see but are nonetheless all around us. Right?

The art of the olive

Right next to the harbor for our ferry, we were surprised to find a copse of olive trees, just like those that are very common around where we live in Southern France. But we’re in hot and humid Japan, not near the hot and dry Mediterranean. What’s this about?

The climate of Shodoshima approaches what’s needed for olive trees to thrive. But not quite. The story includes imperialism, globalization, modern agriculture, and marketing. Let’s go down the rabbit hole a bit:

There are records of olives being brought to Japan in the mid-1800s and attempts to cultivate them for medicinal purposes, but the story of commercial cultivation begins at the turn of the 20th century.

After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan expanded its territory, acquiring large fishing grounds in the northern waters. This naturally allowed the country to increase its haul and the government began to hatch a plan to export fish to other countries, namely Europe. For that, the fish would need to be preserved in cans, and olive oil was the perfect solution.

There was a glaringly obvious issue, however. Olives trees, which are believed to have originated in what is present-day Italy and the eastern Mediterranean basin, weren’t growing wild across Japan and there certainly weren’t any being professionally cultivated in Japan at the time.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce decided to hold trial production in three areas, Mie, Kagoshima and Kagawa. Yet it was only in Shodoshima’s Nishimura district that olive trees managed to survive, and to this day, it’s credited with being the birthplace of olive cultivation in the country.

While the success of Shodoshima has been attributed to its Mediterranean-like climate with its warm weather and relatively low rainfall, this is sadly an oversimplification and cultivation has not come without issues. The island still receives almost double the amount of rain as places on the Mediterranean coast, with the damp and humidity allowing diseases and fungi to spread.

Then, there’s the issue of the olive weevil, which as (bad) luck would have it, is a pest only found in Japan. Once these insects infest a tree, they increase their population very rapidly, subsequently causing the tree to die. As a result, the vast majority of producers on Shodoshima are reliant on pesticides to raise their trees, although a handful of farmers are trying to pursue an organic path. (source)

Today, tourism fuels much of the olive production on Shodoshima because of its rarity in this part of the world.

We bet you don’t think of olives and olive oil when you think of Japanese cuisine. The Japanese don’t either, it seems. But, thankfully, there are always curious and innovative chefs the world over. We had the good fortune to enjoy a remarkable multi-course olive-themed meal at our ryokan on Shodoshima. Details and photos below in One More Bite.

The art of shoyu

We stopped at the Marukin Soy Sauce Museum during our bike ride. Marukin is apparently one of the top five soy sauce brands in Japan. ※ Pretty quickly after we entered this museum we realized that we’d taken soy sauce, or shoyu, for granted. Not any more. Here are some highlights.

(By the way, what’s the difference between soy sauce and shoyu? In Hawaii, we almost always used the term shoyu, and that’s thanks to the major contribution of Japanese culture in Hawaii. Soy sauce is the more generic term, the processes for which go back about 2000 years. In general, soy sauce is a mixture of soybeans and roasted wheat, Aspergillus mold (koji), water and salt, which is then fermented. Shoyu is the Japanese style of this process. It is typically half soy and half wheat. In contrast, the Chinese style is usually 100 percent soy, which tends to be saltier than shoyu. ※ )

A bit about Marukin and Shodoshima:

Soy sauce manufacturing came to Shodo Island around the year 1600. At that time the island served as a strategic way station for maritime transport. It was thus easy to obtain the salt, wheat, and soybeans used to make soy sauce despite its smallness and absence of local production. It was also in an advantageous position for shipping the finished soy sauce throughout the surrounding areas. Consequently, production of soy sauce products thrived on the island. Today, Shodo Island remains as one of Japan’s top four soy sauce production areas.

As a result of severe competition and changing times, the Marukin brand was established in 1907, when several soy sauce manufacturers agreed to come together and form Marukin Shoyu Co., Ltd. with the aim of improved competitiveness, quality and modernization. The market for Marukin’s products grew prodigiously as a result of their delicious taste and premum quality. Today, Marukin is now one of the five most renowned Japanese soy sauce brands. (source)

The museum itself is a repurposed soy-sauce factory that dates from the Taisho period (beginning of the 20th century).

The art of good living

Our friends selected a really lovely inn, or ryokan, that overlooks the sea: Mari Kaion. There are four aspects of this ryokan that we’d like to tell you about: the style, the bikes, the onsen, and the amazing food.

First of all, this ryokan, which isn’t very old, offers a lovely combination of traditional and modern styles. 

And the views were delightful.

Mari Kaion offered bikes for some relaxed exploration of the island. We biked over to the Marukin shoyu factory and back.

The ryokan also offered private onsen for our use. Most of our experiences of onsen have been the public type. These have shared washing facilities and soaking baths. And, understandably, photos in these spaces are never allowed.

But here we can show you the facilities, if not our unclothed bathing selves. Really beautiful relaxing spaces.

The amazing food comes next in our section for:

Kaiseki (multi-course) dinner…

…entitled “Olive Kaiseki Meal” in honor of Shodoshima’s famous olive. Apologies for the translation, but here is how the meal was introduced:

Olive Island, a villa kaiseki cuisine where you can feel the story of that hundred years. We will select cooking methods that make use of seasonal ingredients and freshness, such as seasonal fish in Setouchi and local vegetables of the island, and olive oil from Shodoshima that makes the taste more outstanding, and propose it along with soy sauce prepared in wooden buckets and homemade seasonings.

One lovely aspect of this dinner experience was how each course was introduced. This stone carried a stack of cards; each card described a course. When the server came to introduce the next course, she would remove the last card to reveal the next, and she would explain the course.

Breakfast wasn’t bad either!

October 2023