Shikoku Mura Gallery (四国村ギャラリー)

The gallery belongs to Shikoku Mura (四国村), an open-air museum at the foot of Mount Yashima (屋島) in Takamatsu. It all began in 1975, when Tatsuo Kato (加藤達雄) opened an udon restaurant, Waraya (わら家), in an old house brought from the Iya region of Tokushima. Charmed by the beauty of that house and wishing to preserve precious buildings that were disappearing, he began collecting old houses.

The house museum opened in 1976 with sixteen buildings moved and rebuilt on about 51,000 square metres. There are now 33 relocated buildings from the four prefectures of Shikoku (dwellings, work huts, meeting halls, a theatre, rice storehouses, a soy-sauce brewery), built between the Edo period and the Taishō era. The lighthouse keepers' quarters, rebuilt in 1998, brought these relocations almost to an end.

In 2002 Tadao Ando's gallery was completed and opened. It shows the artworks gathered by Tatsuo Kato, the founder of Shikoku Mura, and the contrast between the old houses and this contemporary building became a new attraction of the village.

The building is of reinforced concrete, left exposed outside and in. It stretches out horizontally, with a long roof and walls, on the south slope of Mount Yashima; beside the village's old houses it is a modern building, solid in character.

The balcony looks onto the water garden (水景庭園, Suikeien), built into the slope and laid out in steps. It lies below, and in the distance one sees the city of Takamatsu.

The gallery shows the works gathered by Tatsuo Kato: French painting, Chinese gilt-bronze Buddhas and bronzes, Persian ceramics. Among the pieces in the collection: a 1941 Nude by Pierre Bonnard (78 × 41 cm), a French painter and one of the central figures of the Nabis; a standing statue of the Vajrasattva Bodhisattva in gilt bronze (27.1 cm) from Northern Wei China, bearing the inscription of the Xi Ping era (516-518); a long-necked lusterware vessel from Iran, about the 13th century (19.2 cm high); a stone statue of Naghini from Mathura, India, about the 1st century (164 cm high); and a watercolour postcard of 1904 by Natsume Sōseki (夏目漱石), one of thirty autograph cards by the writer that the museum holds.

The works on show are rotated two to three times a year.

The gallery is inside Shikoku Mura. The village is open from 9:30 to 17:00; the village reception and the gallery stay open until 16:30. It is closed on Tuesdays (the next day if Tuesday is a public holiday).

Once or twice a year an exhibition on everyday objects from the village's collection replaces the usual display: the artworks are not shown then.

Kotoden-Yashima Station (Kotoden Shido line) is five minutes on foot, and JR Yashima Station (Kotoku line) ten. Free parking is limited and shared with the Waraya udon restaurant and Yashima Shrine: the village asks visitors to use public transport.