Kakashi (案山子, Norio Tsuruta, 2001)

Kakashi (案山子, Norio Tsuruta, 2001)

There’s a village in Japan that’s mostly inhabited by scarecrows. One of the last remaining residents began creating them to replace something that had been lost, fashioning effigies of those who had passed away and immortalising them as if clinging to a distant past long before the shadows of rural depopulation were cast over the village. In a way, it’s an expression of grief or at least a lament for a loss of community and a sense of increasin…