Shikoku

Shikoku is the least-traveled of Japan’s four main islands, and that is exactly why those who make the journey come away so fond of it. Tucked south of the Inland Sea, it is a place of mountains and rivers, small cities and slow coasts, best known for the great Buddhist pilgrimage that loops around its edge — an 88-temple circuit that has drawn white-clad walkers for over a thousand years. Even for visitors with no intention of walking it, that pilgrim spirit sets the island’s tone: humble, welcoming, and quietly spiritual.

The island’s most rewarding city is Matsuyama, watched over by a handsome hilltop castle and home to Dōgo Onsen, reputedly the oldest hot spring in Japan and the model, it is said, for the bathhouse in a certain beloved animated film. To soak in its wooden halls, then wander back through the old streets in a yukata, is to touch something very old and very comforting. Nearby, the town of Kotohira guards Konpira-san, a revered shrine reached by a long stone stairway of more than a thousand steps, climbing past shops and teahouses to sweeping views over the plain.

In recent years Shikoku’s northern waters have become the setting for something unexpected and wonderful. Out in the Seto Inland Sea, the once-declining islands of Naoshima and Teshima have been transformed into a renowned canvas for contemporary art and architecture — museums built into hillsides, installations set among fishing villages, and outdoor sculptures gazing out to sea. Reaching them by ferry, cycling between galleries under a wide sky, is one of the most singular experiences in the country.

Shikoku asks for a little patience — its rail and road connections are quieter than the mainland’s, and the rhythm here is deliberately gentle — but that is precisely its charm. This is Japan with room to breathe: an island of ancient baths and mountain shrines, of pilgrims and ferries, where a bold experiment in modern art now coexists with some of the country’s oldest traditions. Come for the quiet, and stay for the sense that you have found somewhere most visitors never do.

How I’d Plan Shikoku

Shikoku is the island you visit on a second trip to Japan, or on a first trip if you already know you prefer quiet to spectacle. Nothing here is a must-see in the way Kyoto is a must-see, and that is precisely the appeal — you are not queuing for anything.

Three days covers a sensible loop: Matsuyama for the castle and Dōgo Onsen, Kotohira for the shrine stairway, and a night out on Naoshima. Five days lets you add Teshima and slow the whole thing down, which suits the island better.

Naoshima deserves its own note, because it is the reason most people come and it is the easiest place to get wrong. It is not a day trip you squeeze in from Osaka — the ferries are infrequent, the museums close earlier than you expect, several are shut on Mondays, and the island is bigger than the map suggests. Stay the night. The art is genuinely world-class, and the experience of having the island after the last ferry leaves is a large part of what you are paying for. Rent a bicycle; the distances between galleries are exactly bicycle-shaped.

The 88-temple pilgrimage is a two-month walk if you do the whole thing, which almost no visitor does. You can walk a section of it in a day, and several stretches are reachable from Matsuyama. Doing a fragment honestly is better than pretending to do the whole thing.

When to go: Spring and autumn. The Setouchi Triennale, when it runs, transforms the art islands and also fills every bed on them — check whether it is on before you book, in either direction depending on what you want.