All these dolls are made by Ayano Tsukimi. After moving to Osaka, in 2002 she decided to return to Nagoro, her hometown, to take care of her sick father. After her arrival, she discovers that the city, once inhabited and lively, has been almost completely emptied of its inhabitants, the latter being attracted by large cities. Since services were scarce in the city, she decided to grow her own vegetables in the family field. Facing a real problem with crows destroying her crops, she makes her own scarecrow. To scare the birds, she gives him the features of her father and dresses him in the same way as him to make him more realistic than life. To his great surprise, it was even his neighbors who mistook the scarecrow for his father, regularly shouting at him: Good morning! » from the other side of the field.
Amused, Ayano makes several more scarecrows run the field. Unfortunately, one fine morning she found out about the tragic death of her neighbor and friend, with whom she spoke every day. In remembrance of his memory, she sets up a scarecrow bearing his features where his abandoned house remains. Over time, Nagoro’s increasingly aging population declines due to relocations and deaths. In commemoration of these residents, she makes dolls of each of them, as a testimony of their life and their activities in the village. Making a single doll is a lot of work, it takes an average of 3 days of work and is made of rainproof material. Two distinctive points can be found in these figures. These are their black eyes, made with buttons and their clothes, decorations used to signify what their lifestyle and personality were like.
A response to rural desertification
