Japanese Rice Field Art

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan. But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the artwork begins to emerge.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colours created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan.

The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry. 

More than 150,000 vistors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals.

Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields.

 

This is a rice paddy in Japan with farmers planting rice seed.

 

an image starts to emerge as the plants begin growing..

it's Hokusai's "Great Wave" - made from rice plants!

 

a close up view of the all-natural plants - no ink or dye is used

The 2011 crop of “Tanbo” rice field art is bolder and more beautiful than ever before. Though, Japan's artistic rice farmers are going against the grain by growing messages of hope and perseverance meant to encourage a nation fed up with natural and unnatural disasters.

 

The Tohoku region is slowly but surely recovering from the devastating March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. As such, many tanbo creations include messages of encouragement in Japanese.

 

Since the purpose of tanbo rice field art is to be seen first, eaten later, care is taken to situate the compositions in fields that afford an advantageous point of view.

In northern Japan especially, most people will see the artwork from the windows of passing trains as the tracks are often constructed on a raised pediment to preclude against flood damage. The composition above even incorporates a train into its “good luck!” design.

Located in northeastern Japan, Iwate prefecture suffered the most severe damage and loss of life from the deadly tsunami spawned by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Recovery has been difficult but inland rice farms suffered much less than the coastal fishing industry where it's estimated almost 10,000 fishing vessels were lost.