Netizens are amazed by a new trend in rural Japan, known as “rice paddy art”.
“Rice paddy art” is large-scale art made using different strains of rice plants to create a picture that is often viewed from above, requiring a huge effort to co-ordinate and maintain the fields.
The art is becoming so popular, that apparently there are now specific bus tours for tourists eager to catch a glimpse of these magnum opuses.
From Peachy:
Japan’s “Rice Paddy Art” Is Really Amazing!
What an idyllic canvas!
“Rice Paddy Art” is large-scale art in which pictures are drawn on rice paddies using different types of rice plant. It began in the early 1990s. Recently, the number of rice paddies in Japan featuring rice paddy art that are currently known of has grown to 137 places, and rice paddy art is on the rise, with most of it being centred in the Tohoku region.
There are two ways to make “rice paddy art”:
■ Looking at rice paddy art from directly overhead:
There are some instances where if viewed on the flat the art can be hard to make out, but if you look at it from a viewing platform, it can be seen clearly without too much distortion.
■ Looking at rice paddy art from a fixed viewing position (in perspective)
Strictly speaking it is viewed from the viewing platform, and so that the picture can be seen without distortion, the rice-planting is actually designed up close to be seen from far away.
No matter which method is used, it is difficult to make the rice grown according to the design. The bigger the dimensions of the area to be covered for rice growing, and the more elaborate the picture, then the more difficulties there are in creating it.
It is quite surprising that no chemicals are used as colouring agents, since the pictures and words are created using the colourful leaves and ears of grain of ancient strains of rice in purple, yellow, green, red and so on.
Recently “rice paddy art” has become known throughout the whole country, and bus tours have been formed for tourism purposes, with many tourists visiting these paddies. It seems that every year between 100,000 and 200,000 tourists gather in Inakadate village, in Aomori Prefecture. I definitely want to go at take a look at them myself!
Comments from 2ch.net:
トラ(九州地方)：
More amazing than I’d expected.
ボンベイ(岩手県)：
The art is really elaborate.
キジ白(愛知県)：
Are these crop circles?
縞三毛(東日本)：
Amazing
I’d like to see the growing process too.
コーニッシュレック(三重県)：
Better than I thought.
アジアゴールデンキャット(埼玉県)：
Do they do it by hand when they’re planting it?
マーゲイ(dion軍)：
I wonder how they plant them.
Amazing.
キジトラ(宮崎県)：
I don’t think it’s done by hand, must be done entirely by tractor.
The seedlings are planted at equal intervals and in blocks, so I guess that they’d be able to adjust it block by block.
シャルトリュー(WiMAX)：
If they use a rice transplanter then that’d actually be more of a bother.
サバトラ(新疆ウイグル自治区)：
I guess they make the seedlings into a picture when they’re still in the nursery.
ブリティッシュショートヘア(埼玉県)：
Japan is quality precisely because of the effort of not using any colouring agents at all in these pictures.
イエネコ(高知県)：
The Naruto one is amazing.
They grow it calculating the perspective w
The others have been taken from somewhere high-up, though.
ヨーロッパオオヤマネコ(岡山県)：
The Naruto one is a work of art.
It’s being used for an event so they also made the author’s copyright clear.
黒(東日本)：
LMAO at Mazinger Z
シャルトリュー(WiMAX)：
If you simply blow up a picture and plant the rice in that shape, then the deeper into the rice paddy you go, the smaller the it’d become.
マンチカン(関東・甲信越)：
They’re fooling you saying it’s art; this is the work of UFOs. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is covering it up.
ラット(大阪府)：
To think that those old farmers had this kind of useless skill.
ターキッシュバン(大阪府)：
This was on such a high level that I laughed.
Can’t they boost the rural economy through this?
キジトラ(関東・東海)：
This is so much more amazing than I’d anticipated.
I want to go and see these!
