I've never been comfortable with the idea that Japan has three "most beautiful" places. It's a tradition, or a received wisdom, if you like, to rank the triad of the land bridge Ama-no Hashidate, the rocky islands of Matsushima and the sacred torii in the water at Miyajima as the indisputable height of Japanese landscape.

It's a less codified tradition, but fairly common none the less, that Saitama Prefecture comes pretty low in the league table of places to see before you die, and, as a commuter suburb to Tokyo, it has very little reputation as a center of art and culture. Takashi Serizawa, the director of the new Saitama Triennale and a veteran of organizing similar events in Yokohama and Beppu, has sensibly opted not to sugar-coat this new arts festival with claims that Saitama is a region of undiscovered beauty and hive of overlooked cultural production for which the triennale can act as a lure to bring in tourist traffic.

As Serizawa acknowledges, this event is not an "art festival that has an influential museum or art center as its core" or a "localized tourism-based art festival that has backup from its tourism resources, such as breathtaking natural scenery of beautiful satoyama (farmland nestled in the area between mountain foothills) or island-studded seascapes or onsen (hot springs)."