Nagoro, located in the remote mountains of Tokushima in Shikoku, around 550 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, is Japan’s ‘Valley of the Dolls’ or ‘Scarecrow Village‘. In Nagoro, hidden away in Japan’s Iya Valley, life-size dolls now outnumber the human residents many times over!
The dolls are the work of resident, Tsukimi Ayano, who made them to counter the emptiness and loneliness felt in the once-populous Nagoro village due to a rapidly aging population and absence of children, owing to rural depopulation. At present (2019), there are over 350 full-size scarecrows. This contrasts to just 30 actual living residents! Japan’s scarecrow village once had a population of nearly 400. However, most residents then moved towards the cities in search of work.
The population in the village is meagre, which is the trend in Japan that has been stricken by a declining population: low birth rate and high life expectancy. Japan is on the verge of becoming the first ‘ultra-aged’ country with 28 per cent of its population aged above 65 years. Around 40 per cent of Japan’s 1,700 municipalities are defined as depopulated, according to experts.
After World War II, when forestry and agriculture were the main economic drivers, many Japanese lived in rural villages like Nagoro. However, with the emphasis on industrialisation and modernisation, young people started migrating to cities and towns like Tokyo from 1960, leaving the rural village depopulated.
Tsukimi Ayano was born in Nagoro, but moved away with family when she was young. She returned to Nagoro about 15 years ago to help care for her elderly father. When she returned, she placed a scarecrow of her father’s likeness in a field outside her house, to prevent birds eating the seeds from her garden. After that she kept on producing scarecrows. Each scarecrow is made based on a local resident who used to live there. And each is positioned where the villagers had spent their time. The village school shut down in 2012 when its only two students graduated. Ayano has since filled the old building with her scarecrows which she dressed with old students’ clothes.
Though the people of the village may not return, the scarecrows of Nagoro have made it a place of tourist attraction.