In November 2024 Nick and I went on a 3 week journey to Japan. Our trip encompassed a visit to the island of Shikoku and the Iya Valley. This is one of the less congested islands of Japan and while the roads are winding, narrow, and steep, they offer up spectacular views and glimpses of the mountains and valleys of the island.
Tucked deep into these remote mountains of the Iya Valley is the village of Nagoro (Kakashi No Sato or Scarecrow Village), a very small village which is mostly abandoned now. Once a thriving town, filled with farmers, dam workers, families and children, it is now home to more scarecrows than people. As life chipped away at the village, younger people moved away leaving the elderly to tend to the village which slowly grew quieter each year.
Among the remaining inhabitants today is Ayano Tsukimi, the artist whose work has turned Nagoro into something extraordinary: a village populated by dolls. These life-sized figures, scattered across the town, sit at bus stops, tend fields, and gather in abandoned schools. Ayano calls them kakashi, or scarecrows in Japanese. To her, they are more than mere fabric and stuffing—they are memory, spirit, and connection.
The Artist’s story
Ayano was born in Nagoro but left for Osaka as a young child with her parents who found work in the city. She grew up got married and had children of her own. Her parents eventually moved back to Nagoro to live out their lives there. Decades later, after her mother died, she returned to her childhood home in 2002, to look after her father. The neighbours she had once known were gone. The school she attended stood empty, its hallways silent, letting in the wind through broken windows. Saddened by the emptiness, she felt a deep urge to revive the spirit of her home.
Ayano began growing her own vegetables but found the crows were a big problem in the fields. In order to keep the crows away, Ayano stitched together a scarecrow in the likeness of her late father. She dressed it in his old work clothes, propped it in the field, and stood back to admire her creation. The effect was startling. It was as if a part of her father had returned to the village and land. She was also surprised that her neighbours would mistake the scarecrow for her real father and would chat to him and greet him with “Konnichiwa!”
Encouraged, she made more. Each doll was modeled after someone she remembered: a neighbour who loved to fish, a farmer always seen with his straw hat, a child from the school who had once chased dragonflies by the river. Slowly, her scarecrows began to populate the village. All these life-sized dolls caught the attention of travellers and in 2014 a German student made a video which he posted to the internet. Soon the power of the internet pushed Tsukimi into the limelight and Nagoro became a destination on Shikoku.
The Process
Ayano’s art begins with memory. She sits at her wooden table in the fading light of her home, sketching out the features of someone who once lived in Nagoro. She gathers old clothes—sometimes donated, sometimes scavenged from forgotten closets—and fills the fabric with hay and cotton stuffing.
Tsukimi has made several hundred of her scarecrows and the number keeps growing. It takes about three days to make one. The face is made with stretchy cloth stuffed with batting. Their faces are painstakingly created, by pinching the cloth and sewing with yarn and using buttons to form the very expressive faces with eyes that seem to gaze into the past.
Rolled up newspapers and wire form the arms, legs and torso. To keep the dolls from rotting immediately, they’re dressed in waterproof clothing, followed by the outer clothes that define their ‘personality’. Then it’s time for the ‘person’ to take up their position in the village and pose for visitors’ photographs.
For Ayano, the work is deeply personal. Each stitch is a connection to someone she loved or respected. “I don’t want Nagoro to vanish,” she says. “These scarecrows hold the stories of the people who were once here.” When a doll is completed, Ayano places it carefully in a spot that feels right. A fisherman stands by the riverbank with his rod poised; a group of students lingers in the schoolyard, caught forever in silent conversation.
Wandering the village
On the day we visited, Ayona was at home and she came out to talk with us and show us her work room. She explained that making the dolls are her way of fighting against time’s relentless tide. While other villages succumb to oblivion, Nagoro’s scarecrows keep the town alive, if only in spirit. Every scarecrow has a name , sex, age, personality and life story. All of them are recorded in the Scarecrow Registry.
More than an artist, Ayano is a storyteller. Her scarecrows are not mere decorations; they are whispers of a fading era, a tribute to a way of life that once thrived in the heart of rural Japan. She shared some of her processes with us and invited us to wander into the abandoned school area. She is not without humour and many of the poses of her scarecrows are funny like the guy peeping into her workshop. Or the kid trying to escape the school gym.
As you progress through the village each grouping has a story. Some sad, most quite funny as they depict everyday life events that still happen every day. Stories such as the group of folk waiting for a bus at the bus stop, the telephone repair guys or the school crossing guardians at the entry to the school grounds.
An old worn down school
The dam that was built several decades ago by the villagers of Nagoro has a bridge over it which leads directly into the school yard. The first impression from the main road, is a huge dirt playground with an old mural along one edge that was worn but still colourful. This strip of art is what catches your eye from the center of town and draws you across the river into an environment filled with voices from the past.
The school itself was not open but the gym was. Walking toward the school – the building with the pink entry, the closer you looked the more little vignettes you saw, both inside and outside.
Turning immediately right once over the bridge, you are drawn to an unimposing entry to the gymnasium. It looks a bit ordinary and almost an add on room to the school. As you get nearer though, you realize that the gardeners on your left are slacking off or taking naps. In the foyer of the gym is a youngster pressed up against the glass as if to say ‘Let me out of here now!” Other characters in the foyer seem to be custodians or family members of the children that once ran and bounced around inside
In the entry to the gym everyone has to remove their shoes as is the custom in Japan. Seeing a couple of rows of our shoes lined up in this lonely building, added a distinctly a weird vibe to the atmosphere in the building. You step up and through the doors into a rather cold and eerie room stuffed full of many, many scarecrow dolls. There are numerous cameos of different scenarios. Grandparents, mothers and fathers, children and babies. All staged and whispering different stories of their village life. A marriage, a tug of war, ball players. The dust motes float around silently in the weak sun filtering through the air. Everything is a bit musty. This feels like the room where the dolls and their stories are retired to.
Reminders of life
Visiting the village was a sad, more than a little haunted, and at the same time a gently poignant, uplifting experience. It was a sharp reminder of how time and modern day living can erode our remote communities slowly but inevitably. Currently village population is: People 25; Scarecrows 350+.
In a world moving ever faster, Ayano’s work reminds us of the value of memory, of honouring those who came before us. The scarecrows stand vigil, silent guardians and quiet souls of a town that refuses to be forgotten.
Time flows differently in the village. There, among the scarecrows, the past is not gone—it is stitched, stuffed, and sitting quietly, waiting to be remembered
