The EconomistNovember 23rd 2019 Asia 372
1mesinghe and the little-lamented depart-
ing president, Maithripala Sirisena, a for-
mer camp-follower of the Rajapaksas who
destructively lashed out against his relega-
tion to a figurehead role. The shock of mul-
tiple Islamist terror attacks on churches
and hotels on Easter Sunday, which left 268
people dead, underscored the dysfunction.
Despite plenty of prior intelligence, securi-
ty agencies failed either to communicate
the danger or take preventive action. “The
outgoing government itself fostered the ar-
gument for a stronger government,” says
Jayadeva Uyangoda, a political scientist.
Fears inspired by the Easter attacks add-
ed substance to another factor that has
boosted the Rajapaksas: a persistent and
widespread narrative of Sinhalese victim-
hood. This seems silly, given their numeri-
cal superiority: Tamils are just 15% of the
population, and Muslims a mere 10%. But
ancient rivalry with Tamils, added to al-
most 500 years of Portuguese, Dutch and
British rule, plus the rise of successful cos-
mopolitan minorities such as Muslim trad-
ers and English-speaking Christian profes-
sionals, has generated “nativist”
resentment. Building on their reputation
as the heroes who beat the Tamils, the Raja-
paksas have cheerfully allowed Buddhist
extremists to whisper on their behalf. “The
message that went out through temples
everywhere was: ‘This is the only country
we have, and we must save it from the Tam-
ils and the Muslims’,” says a minister from
the outgoing government. “They really
took the genie out of the bottle.”
Many Sinhalese would dismiss such
talk as alarmist. Two of the most notori-
ously chauvinist groups, led by right-wing
Buddhist monks and blamed for stoking
repeated sectarian riots, have declared that
they will dissolve themselves, their job ap-
parently done. “We feel that after 71 years
[since independence] during which the
Sinhala race was being degraded and hu-
miliated, we finally have a leader we can
trust,” declared the leader of one group, Ga-
lagoda Aththe Gnanasara.
If the symbolism of Mr Rajapaksa’s in-
auguration was not reassuring to Tamils,
nor was his pick of General Kamal Guna-
ratne as defence minister. In the closing
days of the war, Mr Gunaratne commanded
an elite unit that hunted Tamil leaders,
gaining a reputation for egregious cruelty.
Mr Rajapaksa scorns Tamil demands for a
federation and has pledged to stop war-
crimes investigations. But Malinda Senevi-
ratne, a commentator seen as close to the
Rajapaksas, says tut-tutting about war re-
cords is a preoccupation of only the Eng-
lish-speaking elite. “The last government
just lied to Tamils and gave them nothing,
so what’s wrong if Gota calls a spade a
spade?” he asks. “As for the defence minis-
ter, are you going to get a soft guy to do the
job when isisis blowing things up here?” 7O
n a windsweptbeach on Honjima, a
small island in the Seto Inland Sea in
southern Japan, three stylised ships’ hulls
sway in the breeze. They are suspended on
poles and fixed to the sand with four rusty
anchors each. Oval mirrors underneath re-
flect the tangled red netting from which
the hulls are made and the lead-coloured
sky above the deserted beach. The ships are
the work of the Russian artist Alexander
Ponomarev. They form one of many sea-
themed artworks displayed on Honjima
during the Setouchi Triennale, an art festi-
val spanning 14 locations around the In-
land Sea (which is known as Setouchi).
The triennale and more permanent mu-
seums and installations on some of the
bigger islands have turned Setouchi into a
tourist destination. Honjima has become a
hipster hot spot. Stylishly dressed visitors
traverse the island on rented bicycles look-
ing for scattered artworks before cycling
back to the harbour to relax over a cappuc-
cino in a café that also peddles designer
furniture. That is a big change: before the
artists and their fans arrived, Honjima was
in apparently terminal decline. Fishing,
the main local industry, was dying. Locals
had been leaving in droves to seek opportu-
nities elsewhere. The remaining islanders,
most of them old, were left with crumbling
houses and the environmental fallout from
defunct industries.
Now hundred of thousands of visitorstravel to the islands every year (and more
than 1m in the year of the triennale), up
from 100,000 15 years ago. This has had
pleasant consequences for everyone from
hoteliers and restaurateurs to a local rail-
way, which reports solid revenue growth. It
has also slightly dampened the speed at
which the islands lose inhabitants. A hand-
ful of new arrivals from elsewhere in Japan,
some of them young families, are settling
permanently every year. Takamatsu, the
bustling port city from which ferries serve
many of the islands, is awash with trendy
bars and arty brunch joints. Two schools
recently reopened on one island.
Encouraging such trends was precisely
the point of the triennale, says Shinobu
Tsunekane from the organising committee
in Takamatsu. Organisers wanted to slow
the decline but also to instil pride in local
customs: “People have been leaving be-
cause life on the islands is inconve-
nient—we want to make them happier and
more comfortable with it again.”
Outsiders are convinced enough by the
idea to copy it. Remote rural areas all over
Japan have started their own art festivals in
the hope of attracting more visitors and,
potentially, new residents. In Shandong
province in China, the authorities are in
the process of turning an island into an art
site, citing the Setouchi region as a model.
Locals are more equivocal. Islanders
were initially wary, says Kenjiro Kaneshiro
of the Fukutake Foundation. It runs the
permanent museums and installations us-
ing funding from Benesse, an education
conglomerate, and started to install art on
the island of Naoshima in the 1990s. Re-
search by Meng Qu of Hiroshima Universi-
ty suggests that some residents worried
that their home would become a theme
park. Such worries may not be entirely un-
founded: a leaflet from Benesse outlining
the company’s “vision” bangs on about the
beauty of nature, the purity of village life
and its superiority to sin-filled cities. There
is not much discussion of the drawbacks of
island life.
Still, Mr Ponomarev’s ships on Honjima
were constructed with the help of local
craftsmen. The hulls mirror the shape of
vessels used by the sailors on whom pass-
ing cargo ships used to depend to navigate
treacherous currents to reach the ports of
Kobe and Osaka. Wooden fishermen’s
houses built by the island’s carpenters
shelter exhibits exploring the dangers of
the sea. On Naoshima and Teshima, the
main islands colonised by Benesse, sculp-
tures and museums are designed to fit into
and reflect their surroundings. Islanders
are consulted about new projects during
occasional meetings.
Some residents are thrilled. “I like all
the art and the crowds that come to look at
it,” says Naohisa Okuyama, who was born
on Naoshima, left to work in the garmentHONJIMA
Avant-garde sculpture helps to revive a
dying regionRural JapanHome is where the
art is