The Seto Inland Sea

Japan's Seto Inland Sea sits between Honshu and Shikoku, a sheltered, island-studded basin so calm the crossing itself barely counts as open water. Naoshima and Teshima have turned two once-quiet fishing islands into a constellation of Tadao Ando concrete and James Turrell light, restaged every three years for the Setouchi Triennale; Onomichi, the mainland hub, holds a 2.5-kilometre temple walk, a cat-covered backstreet and the cycling causeway to Shikoku; and at Miyajima, Itsukushima's vermillion torii (the shrine's ceremonial gateway) still stands in the tideway its present form has stood in since 1168. Guntu, Japan's floating ryokan — a traditional inn, reimagined as a small ship — sails from Bella Vista Marina in Onomichi, in a country that has spent the past five years making foreign-flagged cruising here markedly easier.

“Chichu Art Museum has no electric lighting in its galleries at all — Monet's water lilies are lit only by whatever the sky over Naoshima is doing that hour.”

Signature anchorages

From the art islands in the sea's eastern reaches to the torii standing in Hiroshima Bay's tide — a wide spread of coastline, and calm water for nearly all of it.

• Naoshima — Miyanoura & the Benesse shoreThe art islands' capital: Chichu Art Museum, the Naoshima New Museum of Art, Benesse House and the Art House Project ashore, Yayoi Kusama's pumpkins on the waterfront. Miyanoura's SANAA-built ferry harbour is small-craft only — yachts stand off in the roadstead (an open, unenclosed anchorage) and tender in; good holding and fair shelter from the Bisan Seto's light chop.
• TeshimaA short hop from Naoshima and quieter for it — the Teshima Art Museum's water-drop shell and the Yokoo House, on an island of 14.5km² and around 700 people. Anchor off Ieura or Karato; both are open roadsteads, easy in the settled summer season, exposed if the wind swings north.
• Onomichi & Bella Vista MarinaThe mainland hub and Guntu's home port: a 2.5-kilometre Temple Walk through 25 temples, the Senkoji ropeway, and Cat Alley's painted stone cats. Bella Vista Marina berths and maintains cruisers and smaller yachts by arrangement, tucked close under the town with good shelter.
• Shimanami Kaido — IkuchijimaKosanji Temple and its Carrara-marble Hill of Hope, around 30km down the cycling causeway that runs 70km from Onomichi to Imabari across six bridges. Anchor off Setoda, well sheltered inside the island chain — though the Kurushima Strait further south runs among the fastest tidal currents in Japan and rewards local, agent-briefed timing.
• TomonouraAn Edo-period port where sailing ships once waited out the tide, its Joyato lighthouse and Fukuzenji Temple barely changed since; the model for the opening scenes of Ponyo. Open roadstead off the old town, seven nautical miles from Bella Vista Marina, with onsen (hot-spring baths) ashore going back 1,300 years.
• Miyajima & Itsukushima ShrineThe floating torii and the pier-built shrine behind it, both UNESCO-listed and restored pillar by pillar between 2019 and 2022. No berthing off the shrine itself; anchor in Hiroshima Bay's outer shelter and tender to Miyajimaguchi, a ten-minute ferry crossing from the island.
• Dogo Onsen, MatsuyamaReckoned Japan's oldest hot-spring water, its 1894 bathhouse a National Important Cultural Property and a partial model for Spirited Away's bathhouse. A tender run inland from an Iyo-nada anchorage off Matsuyama; open water, best kept for settled weather.

The scene

Institutions the water has built over decades, not fixtures that come and go with a season.

Table & stay ashore

A Michelin counter in Hiroshima, ryokan built or rebuilt by two of Japan's best-known architects, and the floating ryokan that started it all.

A week, sketched

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