In the Japanese prefecture of Tokushima on the island of Shikoku, there is a village where only a few dozen people live. However, the village looks crowded: hundreds of life-size dolls are placed throughout the village.
The village of Nagoro is located in a mountain valley at an altitude of 800 meters away from popular tourist routes. She became famous in 2014: a German student who studied in Hiroshima filmed a video report about the village, which was watched by more than half a million people around the world.
A distinctive feature of the village is the hundred dolls depicting living people. All of them are made by hands of Ayano Tsukimi - a native of these places. In 2002, 52-year-old Ayano returned home from Osaka to take care of her elderly father. She drew attention to how deserted the village during the years of her absence: instead of the previous 300 fellow villagers, only a few dozen people met her. After settling in the village, Ayano took up agriculture, and to protect the crops from birds and animals, she decided to make a scarecrow. It marked the beginning of the collection, which now has hundreds of dolls that have no analogues in the world.
The manufacturing process begins with creating an expressive face. Some of the dolls are collective images, while others are created in memory of the deceased inhabitants of the village. For the body, the artist uses a wooden frame wrapped in many newspaper sheets. Ayano's clothes and shoes are donated by the locals. This work takes a couple of days, and the dolls "live" for about two years: installed in the open air, they deteriorate from bad weather.
Promotional video:
For all the time of her creativity Ayano has made more than 350 dolls, but about a hundred are presented in the permanent "exhibition". Each doll is registered in a magazine that is available to tourists. There is a notice next to it: “We are not simple scarecrows. Each of us has our own name, character and biography, described in this magazine."
Now only 30 people live in Nagoro: the youngest of them is in the 2nd grade, and most of them are elderly people. This situation is typical for all of Japan: according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of the country for 2013, more than 10 thousand villages are under threat of extinction due to low birth rates and an aging population.
Anastasia Barinova