The Dying Village of Nagoro, Which a Japanese Artist Populated with Dolls and Turned into a Tourist Attraction (18 photos + 1 video)

While the tiny Japanese village of Nagoro continues to decline due to an aging population and the exodus of young people to larger cities, its population remains virtually unchanged.





All thanks to a local artist who creates life-size dolls of residents who leave or die.



When Japanese artist Ayano Tsukimi returned to the village where she was born to care for her father, she discovered that her neighbors were moving en masse to big cities, and those who remained were already very old. Faced with the slow death of her beloved village, Tsukimi had an epiphany. One day, she made a scarecrow for her garden in the likeness of her late father. And then she thought, "Why not?"

Tsukimi began creating other life-size dolls, modeled after former local residents. She places them throughout the village in a variety of life situations—just as their human counterparts once lived, having since either died or moved away.



Over more than ten years of continuous work, she has created around 350 of these rag doubles. Now the village has become a mesmerizing, if eerie, dollhouse. Road workers stand frozen during road repairs, a fisherman eternally awaits his catch on the riverbank, and at the local school, an entire class of textile students silently listens to their cotton-faced teachers.



Ayano continues to care for her creations, repairing damaged figures and creating new ones. Today, fewer than 40 real inhabitants remain in the village. And Nagoro itself has become a strange fairytale world, inspired by loss, progress, and, of course, art.







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