Over the past few years, the Japanese population is declining drastically. The rural and mountainous region have been top on the list of areas showing depleting human population. One such village called Nagoro situated deep in the mountains of western Japan boasted a population of over 300 people earlier. It has now diminished to as less as only 27 people!
In order to counter the loneliness in the village, Tsukimi Ayano a local resident decided to place human-sized dolls on the streets. The 69-year-old dol makers says, “Only 27 people live in this village but the number of scarecrows is tenfold, like 270”, reports Hindustan Times.
It all began 16 years ago when she made her first scarecrow and dressed him up in her father’s clothes to prevent birds from eating the seeds planted in her garden.
“A worker who saw it in the garden thought it really was my father… he said hello but it was a scarecrow. It was funny,” recalls the lady who has breathed life into the dying village through her scarecrows.
She prepares the dolls using wooden sticks, newspapers to fill the body, elastic fabrics for skin and knitting wool for hair. In order to make them look humanly, she applies pink color to the lips and cheeks with a make-up brush. These human-sized dolls are scattered around every nook and corner in the village.
Ayano tells that there no children left in the village and the youngest member there is 55 years old! “People gradually left… It’s lonely now,” she said. “I made more dolls as I remembered the time when the village was lively,” she says.
Looking at the declining population in the rural areas, the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe has pledged to revive regions outside Tokyo by spending tens of billions of yen on them.
Takumi Fujinami, an economist at the Japan Research Institute says, “In order to combat depopulation, we need people moving into depopulated areas. But recovering the population is extremely difficult. Instead, it’s important to increase income or improve working conditions for young people in rural areas.”
Nagoro has, however, become a tourist attraction, thanks to Ayano’s dolls! She says, “Before I started making scarecrows, nobody stopped by. Now many people visit here. I hope Nagoro will become lively again and many people come here for sightseeing.”