A copper refinery that ran for ten years and then lay derelict for a century is now a museum that breathes. The works went up on Inujima early in the twentieth century and closed almost at once, leaving a tall chimney, fields of karami brick made from slag, and red-brick ruins. In 2008 the architect Hiroshi Sambuichi brought those remains back as a museum that runs on almost no mechanical power: the chimney's stack effect and the ground's own heat carry the ventilation and the daylight. An industrial ruin became an argument about sustainability.
The art inside is by Yukinori Yanagi, whose subject is the writer Yukio Mishima. Components and texts salvaged from Mishima's former house hang in darkened passages, and between the metal reflections and the quiet the visitor is left with Mishima's questions about modernization, the nation and the individual. Industrial history, environmental architecture and art that argues directly rarely occupy one building. Here they do.
For the guest who goes deep, this is a rare place. The boat crossing filters out anyone in a hurry, and what waits is closer to an argument than an exhibition. Guests move through black passages ventilated by nothing but the chimney and the ground, between the ruin and the idea, and the stretch tends to be the heaviest and the longest-remembered of the itinerary.