Can you imagine a place like this? Well you don’t have to, because it’s real:

Every three years, three hundred square miles of land in northwestern Japan are transformed into the most ambitious and largest-scale art installation in the world: the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field. One hundred sixty of the world’s best-known landscape artists, sculptors, and architects create artworks in two hundred villages that dot the mountains and terraced rice fields of the Japanese countryside, with the intent of rediscovering relationships between nature, art, and humanity, forging collaborations between global artists and local communities, and connecting people to each other and the land.

Half a million people make the annual pilgrimage to witness this unique art project. Art Place Japan offers an exhaustive full-color catalog of the eight hundred artworks created during the past fifteen years. For those lucky enough to visit, this book, the first in English on the subject, also offers detailed information on how to visit the often-remote sites, with travel information and a newly commissioned map that locates the projects throughout the Niigata Prefecture.

So there you have it! And if you can’t get yourself there, this lovely new book – Art Place Japan: The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Vision to Reconnect Art and Nature by Fram Kitagawa – can help you at least pretend!

{1. Harumi Yukutake (Japan), Restructure, 2006-ongoing; Image credit: Masanori Ikeda  / 2. Kyota Takahashi (Japan), Gift for Frozen Village, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 ; Image credit: Osamu Nakamura / 3. Antje Gummels (Germany/Japan),
 Traveling Inside, 2009
; Image credit: Isamu Murai   / 4. Chiyoko Todaka (Japan),
 Yamanaka Zutsumi Spiral Works, 2006; Image credit: Hisao Ogose}

Available at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / PAPress / IndieBound