Asia's Art Island; A Japanese tycoon opens a new museum to share his dazzling private collection. Just don't miss the boat.

Byline: Kay Itoi

Soichiro Fukutake was strolling through a Claude Monet exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts when he arrived at a large, never-before-exhibited two-panel canvas of waterlilies. He was mesmerized. A little plaque on the wall indicated that the painting was on loan from a Paris gallery. Great news, he thought; the piece wasn't confined to a permanent museum collection. That was in 1998. Today "Water-Lily Pond" (1915-26) hangs in Fukutake's Chichu Art Museum, opening this Sunday on the picturesque island of Naoshima in western Japan. "The painting was begging me to take it with me," deadpans Fukutake, chairman and CEO of Benesse Corp., a Japanese education-services empire. "What else could I do?"

He could have bought the show's catalog like other people, but that's not his style. Fukutake, 58, is the most visible and vigorous art collector in postbubble Japan. Unlike the country's 1980s investors, who paid millions of dollars for Picassos, Renoirs and van Goghs that they promptly stashed away in storage, Fukutake believes passionately in sharing his collection. But only to those willing to travel: Naoshima is a 20-minute boat ride from Okayama, the nearest big city, which itself lies 700 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.

It's worth the trip. The Chichu is merely the latest installment in Fukutake's scheme to turn remote, hilly Naoshima into a major international center for art. Those who know the collector say he leads a modest life--no flashy cars or designer suits--except when it comes to art. His Okayama-based company--which operates correspondence courses for kids, nursing homes, lifestyle magazines and the Berlitz International chain of language schools--bought the southern part of the island in 1987 for 1 billion yen. Fukutake thought that after decades of preoccupation with economic expansion--and the ensuing recession--Japanese needed to rediscover themselves with the help of fine arts. "Art is a medium that helps a person reflect on himself, but it requires a certain environment," he says. "I believe in the power of art."

He hired the Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design Benesse House, a museum and small hotel rolled into one, which opened on Naoshima in 1992. The place soon housed 20th-century masterpieces by such artists as Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, David Hockney and Bruce Nauman. Then Fukutake began hiring international artists like Jannis Kounellis, Richard Long, Cai Guo Qiang, Tatsuo Miyajima and James Turrell to produce unique pieces that fit the setting. Kounellis, for example, used Naoshima's driftwood for his ...