ABSTRACT

Rural villages in Japan are rapidly ageing and depopulating. On Shikoku Island, in the remote mountainous Iya Valley, is the village of Nagoro. Residents who have left or passed away have been replaced with ‘kakashi’ or scarecrows in the form of life-like dolls. Currently, scarecrows outnumber the village residents and appear throughout the community—waiting at bus stops, working the fields, and studying at the closed school. The attempt to preserve village life and identity through the scarecrow displays has begun to attract the attention of media and tourists. This paper examines this emerging rural tourism attraction in the context of Japanese rural depopulation and peripheralisation. Nagoro is representative of many Japanese villages where the rural lifestyle is disappearing. It has adopted a unique form of quiet resistance to the ending of an era viewed in the context of museumisation and abandoned landscapes. Rural communities are transitioning finding themselves between government rejuvenation policies and learning to live beyond growth.

摘要

日本的农村正在迅速老龄化和人口减少。在四国岛上，在偏远山区的祖谷谷，是名五郎村。离开或去世的居民被卡卡西取代'或栩栩如生的娃娃形式的稻草人。目前，稻草人的数量超过了村里的居民，并出现在整个社区——在公交车站等车、在田里干活、在关闭的学校学习。通过稻草人展示来保护村庄生活和身份的尝试已经开始吸引媒体和游客的注意力。本文在日本农村人口减少和外围化的背景下研究了这种新兴的乡村旅游景点。名五郎是许多农村生活方式正在消失的日本村庄的代表。它采用了一种独特的安静方式来抵抗在博物馆化和废弃景观的背景下看到的时代的结束。农村社区正在政府振兴政策和学习超越增长的生活之间转变。