Naoshima's Yellow Pumpkin
📍 Kagawa, Naoshima
A giant polka-dotted yellow pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama sits at the end of a concrete pier on an art island in the Inland Sea — so beloved it was rebuilt after a typhoon swept it out to sea.
At the end of a plain concrete pier, against the blue of the Seto Inland Sea, sits one of the most photographed objects in Japan: a fat, cheerful, polka-dotted yellow pumpkin by the artist Yayoi Kusama. It has greeted visitors to the art island of Naoshima since 1994.
Why It’s Interesting
Naoshima is a former industrial island reborn as an open-air museum, and Kusama’s pumpkin is its mascot and its handshake — the first artwork most people walk to off the ferry. Two metres of glossy yellow studded with black dots, it’s simple, joyful, and weirdly photogenic from every angle. In 2021 a typhoon swept it into the sea and broke it into three pieces; rather than patch it, Kusama’s team built a tougher replacement, even adding a hook so it can be hauled to safety next time.
Best Time to Visit
Good year-round. A clear day gives you the dotted yellow against deep blue water; early morning or late afternoon spares you the worst of the photo queue.
Getting There
Take a ferry from Takamatsu (Kagawa) or Uno (Okayama) to Naoshima, then walk, bus, or rent a bike to the pier. Build the visit around the island’s celebrated art museums.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
At the end of a concrete pier on an art island in the Inland Sea sits Yayoi Kusama's yellow pumpkin, polka-dotted and patient, so beloved that when a typhoon swept it into the sea in 2021, the island simply could not bear it and had a new one made.
I came over on the ferry with the art pilgrims and waited out the photo queue like everyone else (a squirrel does not cut lines; a squirrel transcends them via pier piling). Up close the dots read like a language. The sea behind does its blue work. It should be silly — a big fiberglass vegetable — and instead it's somehow the whole island distilled.
Go at first light before the queue forms, then spend the day in Naoshima's museums. The pumpkin is the doorbell. The island is the house.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
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Okunoin Cemetery, Koyasan
Otagi Nenbutsu-ji — 1,200 Stone Monks, Each Carved by a Different Amateur
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