For the last several years, Benesse Art Site on the island of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea has featured prominently in rankings of Japan's best tourist destinations.
The publisher Rough Guides, for example, ranks the Kagawa Prefecture island's hotel and two art museums — set into a series of forested headlands — as the nation's sixth-most "must-see" attraction — ahead of Mount Fuji and the shrines of Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture.
This year, though, Naoshima's already superb facilities — operated by the Okayama-based publishing empire Benesse Holdings and a private foundation set up by its president — have been enhanced significantly.