Video: Japanese rice paddies: land art in action
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The rice fields are very beautiful in themselves, but the Japanese apparently believe that there is no limit to perfection, and painted on them beautiful paintings depicting national heroes and cartoon characters.
It all started back in 1993, when the village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Tokyo, was looking for a project that could revitalize the local economy. They needed a way to attract tourists, interested in Japanese art and rice fields in particular.
In addition, residents each April decided what to plant in the fields for a year, and someone suggested not only growing rice, but also doing it beautifully. As a result, every year, before planting, designers develop projects on a computer for a future work of art grown on the ground. In 2007, over 700 people worked on the design. And this is in view of the fact that Inakadate has approximately 15,000 square meters (3.7 hectares) of rice paddies. Pictures are best viewed in September, when all the vegetation has already risen and is in full bloom.
Many tourists are interested in the question "how they draw in the fields." Everything is simple here. The desired colors are obtained by using four different varieties of rice. There are rice bushes with purple and yellow leaves - kodaimai rice and the traditional tsugaru roman variety with green leaves.
Following the lead of Inakadate, other villages, such as Yonezawa in Yamagata Prefecture, have begun to create their own colored tanbo fields. The growing attention of tourists and competition have taken their toll. From now on, rice fields are not only larger in area, but also much brighter and richer. On them you can find both old characters of Japanese fairy tales and modern heroes such as Naruto and Mazinger Z.
In order for tourists to see the masterpieces and appreciate the gigantic forms of land art, spacious observation towers were erected in the villages. In Sydney, they decided not to suffer with planting colorful vegetation and arranged a mirror maze in Hyde Park, which attracts no less tourists than paintings in rice fields.
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