The local school is now filled with a few dozen dolls patiently waiting for class to begin. Made of straw, the bizarre dolls are dressed in old clothes. Once working in the garden, Tsukimi made the first doll in the likeness of her father and then she came up with the idea to replace the other family members with similar dolls.
10 years later, her work continues. Every doll is located in the place where she would resemble that person. So strolling along the village you will find quite unique monuments either working in the field, fishing in the river or simply sitting along the road
and starring at you .This is the village of Nagoru, found on Shikoku Island, the smallest of the country’s four main islands. Over the years, its inhabitants have left for jobs in Osaka and Tokyo, or died. Now there are only a few dozen people left, like Ayano Tsukimi. The 64-year-old returned to her hometown 11 years ago. In the decade since, she has populated Nagoru with an army of handmade dolls based on those who have left, including enough children, teachers and staff to fill the abandoned local school.In a new documentary, “The Valley Of Dolls,” Tsukimi shares her world with Berlin-based filmmaker Fritz Schumann. She explains that she started by planting seeds in the emptying village. When the plants didn’t take, she thought she needed a scarecrow. She fashioned one to look like her father, and from there came the idea to recreate all of the people who once lived in the village.
Previous coverage of her work reduced it with words like “creepy,” so the complexity is refreshing. Tsukimi explains that she isn’t interested in “weird” dolls. Hers are meant to blend into the scenery as their real life versions would have. She makes them from straw, rags and old clothes, and has turned over some 350 dolls by her count. While the faces are the hardest to get right, she says she’s got a gift for grandmothers.She’s clearly succeeded in attracting attention. Last year, an Australian newspaper interviewed Ken Osetroff, the director of a travel company that includes Nagoru in a tour package of autumnal Japan, because of the dolls. Osetroff says the village can’t be found on a map: “It’s one of those places that’s very difficult to get to, and we’re predicting in the next four years it will be abandoned, as everyone’s moving away or dying.”Even the dolls don’t last longer than three years, according to Tsukimi. She keeps a large number in play by creating new ones constantly. Surrounded as she is by frozen faces, she doesn’t think of herself aging or ever stopping. At one point in the documentary, considering her own mortality, she chuckles. “I’ll probably live on forever,” she says.
A JAPANESE woman has been replacing humans in her village with life-size dolls when they die.
Partly, this was to draw in outsiders. “I thought people will get interested and take photos if I put dolls at the entrance of the valley. I put them on the field doing work, or waiting for the bus,” Tsukimi says.The documentary is beautifully filmed, with long shots of the dolls looking perfectly natural in their surroundings. Tsukimi is the only voice heard, and her thoughtful musings tackle questions of mortality, urbanization, and the loneliness of human existence.
The doll population in Nagoro, southern Japan, now hugely outnumbers people in this isolated mountain residence.
Tsukimi Ayano has spent years weaving more than 350 of these dolls to remember her once-flourishing community, The Sun reports.
The lifeless figures now dwarf the 30 or so residents left in the village.The 67-year-old said: “Since I started to weave the dolls, I am not alone anymore. Every day someone comes to visit me.”
Brazilian journalist and filmmaker Roberto Maxwell visited Nagoro to meet the woman behind the sewn village-dwellers.
His photos reveal dolls crowding bus stops and making up family gatherings And “worker” dolls can be seen dotted throughout the community fixing roads or gathering hay.
Since Tsukimi’s parents passed away she has been living in Nagoro by herself.
Tsukimi has not just made dolls of deceased neighbours and friends, but also of her own family. Roberto’s snaps shows a glimpse of the doll-maker’s father, mother and the whole family preparing for a marriage.“I remember him always smoking,” Tsukimi said of her father.
It’s not just the village’s departed residents who have been turned into dolls — Tsukimi has also created one of herself busily doing pottery.
The doll-making village intrigued Roberto, given his interests in traditional culture, local communities and immigration.“Dolls are everywhere,” added Roberto. “They represent the daily life of the village, which had its golden time during the construction of a dam.”
Although Tsukimi had no such intention, she drew attention to the problem of depopulation in rural Japan.
