Driving around the small town, visitors will easily see images of elderly people tending to the garden, or a family waiting patiently at the bus stop. Everything seems so normal, until you realize that most of those “people” are not people.
In fact, they are dolls about the same size as real people, and there are 10 times as large as the population here.
These stuffed dolls are the work of Tsukimi Ayano, an old woman with a hobby of crafting in the village. Ayano has moved here since 2002, after spending most of her life in Osaka.
At first, Ayano just wanted to create a doll to resemble her father to scare away birds from eating seeds in the garden. However, after a while, this project was increasingly expanded, dolls appeared scattered throughout every corner of the small village.
“I never expected people from all over the world to visit this small village,” Ayano told CNN in an interview at her doll factory.
The dolls are inspired by the inhabitants of the village
As an isolated town located on the low-traffic island of Shikoku, access to Nagoro Village is not an easy thing. Here, buses only travel in small numbers, and even the nearest train station is an hour away. However, this difficulty does not prevent about 3,000 people from visiting the village each year, some of whom return regularly.
Time has certainly had an effect on Nagoro, similar to villages with aging populations across Japan. In Ayano’s childhood memories, the village had more than 300 inhabitants, including families with young children. But by July 2019, the village had only 27 residents, and the youngest was over 50 years old.
Since moving back to Nagoro in 2002, many elderly residents have died, including her next door neighbors. Meanwhile, young people are moving to big cities in search of better opportunities to improve their economic situation.
Therefore, Mrs. Ayano had the idea to create effigies of the people who used to live in the village as a way to remember them and breathe life into the village that was gradually disappearing.
“Before there were scarecrows, this was just an ordinary village and nobody really cared about it,” she said.
In fact, even when the dolls were placed all over the village, it remained an “unknown” location until a German filmmaker named Fritz Schumann visited. Intrigued by this unique village, he made a short documentary titled “Valley of Dolls” to tell the story of the village. The film later became a resounding success, garnering public attention around the globe.
The life of the dolls
When walking around the village, visitors will see many dolls with their own “life”: workers attaching roadside signs, a couple of lovers sit under a tree watching the murmuring river flow. , a fisherman in boots resting on the porch with his daughter, and some elderly people working hard in the garden.
At the only primary school now closed after the last two students in the village graduated, the teacher was standing on the podium giving a lecture to 12 students, and they were all dolls.
In the spacious gym, lots of dolls are lined up along the long wall. On the stage of the practice room are dolls attending the wedding ceremony, with the bride wearing traditional Japanese dress.
When asked if she plans to leave Nagoro and return to Osaka in the future, Ayano said: “The reason I came back to the village was to take care of my father. If I get sick or get old, I can go live with my children or family in Osaka. But as long as I’m healthy, I want to stay in Nagoro and continue making dolls.
This is great news for visitors and current residents – who enjoy the doll’s presence – as they only last three years before needing replacement. With a stable residency in Nagoro, Ayano will continue to breathe life into a dying village with stuffed dolls.
Source: CNN