Tsukimi Ayano came back to her village Nagoro in 2002, after a long leave for Osaka. Upon returning, she started decorating the village with scarecrows. Scarecrows (“Kakashi” in Japanese) are an old tradition in Japan, but Tsukimi made them into a beautiful outdoors exhibition.
But in 2019, Nagoro is not the village Tsukimi remembers from her childhood, when 300 lived there. Only 27 people currently live in the village. The local school has been closed for several years, and its gym was turned into a huge showroom of kakashi. Although vivid and intriguing, Nagoro’s scarecrows conveying the essence of a monument to life and an era long gone.
Nagoro, with its charming and sad aspects, tells the story of many villages in the world – a massive wave of vanishing culture. Young generations choose urban upon rural life, consolidating to global codes, leaving unique cultural characteristics behind. Can our rural world survive and revive?
My visit in the village took place on April 23rd, 2019.
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