Paddy art lets debt-hit village go with grain

NEARLY two decades ago, Koichi Hanada, a town hall clerk, received an unusual request from his boss: find a way to bring tourists to the village of Inakadate in Japan's rural north, an area of rice paddies and apple orchards.

Hanada spent months racking his brain. Then, one day he saw schoolchildren planting a rice paddy as a class project. They used two varieties of rice, one with dark purplish stalks and the other bright green ones. Then it struck him, why not plant the coloured varieties to form words and pictures?

"I didn't know it would become such a hit," he said.

The result was paddy art, a concept that has put the village on the map. Every year since 1993, villagers have created pictures using rice paddies as their canvas and living plants as their paints.

As their creations have grown larger, more complex and multicoloured, they have drawn growing media attention and curious crowds.

Last year, more than 170,000 visitors clogged the narrow streets of this quiet community of 8,450 mostly older residents, causing traffic jams and waiting hours to see living art.

To create this year's football field-size picture of a samurai battling a warrior monk, villagers used a computer model to place more than 8,000 stakes to guide them in planting rice genetically engineered to produce three more colours: dark red, yellow and white.

The images have become so detailed, mayor Koyu Suzuki said visitors ask if they are painted on. He said the villagers believed they must produce ever more intricate pictures to keep tourists coming back.

"We have no sea and no mountains, but what we do have plenty of is rice," said Suzuki, 70. "We have to create a tourism industry using our own ingenuity."

Residents of Inakadate hope the paddy art will reverse their village's decline. Like much of rural Japan, Inakadate has fallen on hard times from a shrinking population, a crushing public debt and falling prices for agricultural goods.

"So many things have gone wrong, but the paddy art lets the community feel together again," said Kumiko Kudo, 73, who runs a noodle bar.

But so far, the village has failed to turn its accomplishments on the paddies to its financial benefit. The visitors who now flood in during the summer growing season, when the rice stalks grow tall enough for the pictures to become visible, do not splash out.

"Tourists come, say how wonderful it is and then just leave," said Katsuaki Fukushi, the town hall economic chief.

Before the paddy art, the village's only claim to fame was the discovery in 1981 of the remains of 2,000-year-old rice paddies, making it one of the oldest rice-growing regions in Japan's sparsely populated north. The village tried to capitalise on the discovery by building a Neolithic-themed park during the better economic times of the 1980s, when Tokyo showered regions with money for public works.

That tap has since been turned off, and the park now sits weed-filled and often empty. It is one reason the village is now saddled with a debt of 68m, three times its total annual budget.

Villagers say the less expensive paddy art is better suited to the meaner times. The paddies cost just 22,000 per year to rent, plant and maintain. While the village does not charge visitors to see paddy art, it does ask for donations, which last year brought in 44,000, more than covering the costs.

On a recent afternoon, people thronged an observation deck atop the village hall, built in the shape of a medieval castle, to see the paddy art below. Most praised Inakadate's ingenuity. "Other parts need to learn this spirit," said Masako Sato, 69, a retired teacher from Akita, five hours away.

Volunteers plant and maintain the paddies. In the spring, about 1,200 villagers turned up to plant the half-dozen paddies for this year's spectacle.

Back in 1993, Hanada and 20 village hall colleagues made the first design, a simple, two-coloured image representing a nearby mountain. Along the way, the project has learned from its mistakes. In 2003, a picture of the Mona Lisa grew to look pregnant, Mayor Suzuki said, because she was too narrow at the top and bloated at the bottom. To correct the perspective, the villagers asked a teacher to use a computer to map out where to plant stalks so pictures would have proper proportions when viewed from the village hall.

The village has also spawned imitators. At least a half-dozen other communities in Japan now create paddy art, though none seem as intricate.

Feeling that they have been left to fend for themselves by Tokyo's spending cuts, villagers say they must find ways to capitalise on the influx of visitors.

Yozo Kikuchi, head of the chamber of commerce, says the village must develop new souvenirs. So far they include a smiling grain of rice mascot named Little Mr Rice-Rice. The mayor has big plans, though. He envisions increasing the number of paddy-art sites and building new facilities for visitors, including possibly a flower-lined road, to turn Inakadate into an "art village".

"We used to treat economic benefits as an afterthought," said Eiji Kudo, head of the village council. "Now we realise how important they are."

• Additional reporting by Yasuko Kamiizumi.