Kagawa Prefecture is the smallest of Japan’s 47 prefectures by area, yet it packs in a remarkable range of cultural and natural attractions: one of Japan’s most celebrated traditional gardens, a mountain shrine pilgrimage with nearly 800 stone steps, a small island that has become one of the world’s most significant contemporary art destinations, and two surviving original-keep castles. For overseas visitors, Kagawa is one of Shikoku’s most accessible and rewarding prefectures, particularly for those arriving by ferry from Osaka or connecting via Okayama on the Seto Ohashi Bridge.

Kotohiragu Shrine (Konpira-san)

Kotohiragu is the most famous shrine in Shikoku and one of the most visited in Japan. Enshrined on the slopes of Mount Zotaki above the town of Kotohira, it is dedicated to Okuninushi-no-Mikoto and the deity of sea voyages, and for centuries sailors and fishermen came here to pray for safe passage across Japan’s inland seas. The practice continues today, and the approach to the shrine is lined with stone lanterns donated by maritime companies and fishing guilds.

The main shrine building sits at the top of 785 stone steps — a climb of 45 to 60 minutes at a moderate pace, passing through an avenue of sugi cedar and stone lanterns. The view back down the steps from the main courtyard, across the Sanuki plain toward the Seto Inland Sea in the distance, is reward enough for the effort. Those willing to continue face a further 583 steps to the inner sanctum (okushiasha), for a total of 1,368 steps — one of the longer shrine climbs in the country.

Along the way, at step 431, the Shoin building deserves a deliberate stop. This small reception hall was built in the early seventeenth century and contains painted sliding screens (fusuma) by the Maruyama school; its compact raked garden is attributed to the same designer responsible for portions of Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu. Entry to the Shoin is included in the standard approach.

Access: Kotoden Kotohira Line from Kawaramachi Station in Takamatsu to Kotohira Station, approximately 60 minutes, ¥620. The stone steps begin a 10-minute walk from the station through the souvenir-lined approach street.

Ritsurin Garden

Ritsurin Garden is, by the consensus of landscape historians and garden designers, one of the three or four finest Edo-period strolling gardens in Japan — and unlike the other contenders (Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, Korakuen in Okayama), it is relatively uncrowded for much of the year. The garden took the Matsudaira clan 100 years to complete, from 1625 to 1745, and uses the wooded slopes of Mount Shiun as borrowed scenery — the mountain appearing as a seamless backdrop to the carefully arranged ponds and hills in the foreground.

The garden contains six ponds and 13 sculpted hills, connected by winding paths designed so that each turn reveals a new framed composition. Seasons dictate the experience completely: plum blossoms in February, cherry blossoms in early April, hydrangea and iris in June, lotus in July and August, and the red-maple reflections in the ponds in November are each worth timing a visit around. Entry is ¥610. Allow a minimum of two hours for the main south garden; the north garden (included in the same entry) is less formal and often skipped by visitors in a hurry.

Access: Kotoden Bus or JR train to Ritsurin-Koen Kitaguchi Station, five-minute walk to the north gate. Alternatively, Kotoden Nagao Line to Ritsurin-Koen Station, five-minute walk to the east gate.

Naoshima Art Island

Naoshima is one of the most significant contemporary art destinations in the world. Since the Fukutake Foundation (now Benesse Holdings) began transforming the island in 1992 under the creative direction of founder Soichiro Fukutake and architect Tadao Ando, Naoshima has accumulated a permanent collection of site-specific works that cannot be experienced anywhere else.

The island’s three core museum facilities each require separate entry and a full day to do properly:

The Chichu Art Museum houses only three permanent works, but the scale and ambition of each fills the museum. Claude Monet’s five Water Lilies paintings occupy a gallery where all light is natural, entering through a ceiling aperture designed so that the paintings are seen in shifting conditions throughout the day. James Turrell’s Open Sky presents a square room open to the sky above — as the day progresses, the colour of the sky panel changes in relationship to the white concrete walls. Walter De Maria’s Time/Timeless/No Time centres on a polished granite sphere in a stairwell chamber surrounded by gilded wooden spheres. Entry ¥2,060; timed entry tickets should be booked online in advance, as same-day entry is not always possible in peak season.

The Lee Ufan Museum, also designed by Ando, presents the work of the Korean-Japanese artist in minimalist concrete galleries that extend partially underground. The dialogue between the building’s severe geometry and Lee Ufan’s paintings and sculptures — spare and meditative, exploring the relationship between objects and empty space — makes this one of the more intellectually demanding and rewarding small museums in Japan. Entry ¥1,030.

The Art House Project in Honmura village transforms seven traditional buildings in Naoshima’s oldest residential quarter into permanent artworks. Highlights include James Turrell’s Minamidera — a pitch-black room in which visitors sit in total darkness for 10 to 15 minutes until their eyes slowly resolve a glowing rectangle from the darkness — and Tatsuo Miyajima’s Kadoya, where LED counters embedded in the floor of a restored fisherman’s house flicker through numerical cycles underwater. Entry ¥520 per house, or a combined pass for most houses at ¥1,050.

Access: Ferry from Takamatsu Port to Miyaura Port on Naoshima: 50 minutes by high-speed ferry (¥1,220) or 60 minutes by regular ferry (¥580). Ferries run several times daily; check the Shikoku Ferry or Benesse website for current timetables. From Okayama/Uno Port: 20-minute ferry (¥290) — the quickest option for visitors arriving via the Shinkansen. A free shuttle bus operates between Miyaura Port and the Benesse House museum area.

Marugame Castle

Marugame Castle is one of Japan’s 12 surviving original-keep castles — structures in which the main tower dates to the feudal period and has never been destroyed or reconstructed. At Marugame, it is not the tower itself (small by Japanese castle standards) that draws visitors, but the stone walls below it.

The castle sits on a hill above the city of Marugame, and its fan-shaped ishigaki (stone walls) rise in a sweeping curve from the base to just below the tower keep — at their highest point, 60 metres above the surrounding streets. These walls are considered the finest example of nozurazumi stone stacking in Japan, and the engineering achievement of building them in the early seventeenth century without modern materials remains impressive to observe from below.

Entry to the castle grounds is ¥200. Cherry blossoms in early April transform the castle hill into a canopy of pink, and the combination of white tower, grey stone wall, and flowering trees is a strong image.

Access: JR Yosan Line from Takamatsu to Marugame Station, approximately 30 minutes, ¥380. The castle is a 15-minute walk from the station through the city centre.

Takamatsu Castle Ruins (Tamamo Park)

Takamatsu Castle was, in its original form, a water castle (umishiro) — a fortification built directly on the coastline with the Seto Inland Sea providing a defensive moat on three sides. Today the sea has receded somewhat, but the castle’s stone walls still extend over a moat channel fed by tidal water, and the remaining turrets look directly across the harbour toward Naoshima and the islands of the inland sea.

The outer grounds of Tamamo Park are free to enter and constitute one of the more relaxed places in Takamatsu for an early morning or late afternoon walk along the harbour. The inner citadel, where three surviving turrets and a reconstructed watchtower stand within the original walls, charges ¥200 for entry. The views across the harbour from the walls are unobstructed; on clear days, the island silhouettes of the Seto Inland Sea extend to the horizon.

Access: 10-minute walk from Takamatsu Station along the harbour front. The park entrance faces the station plaza.