Japanese Music – Sakura Hanagasumi

Japanese farmers use rice fields to express their art• Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan. Every year Japanese

farmers are planting rice in different patterns and using different sorts of rice for color. The result is spectacular pictures. Unfortunately it's only visible until the rice is harvested in September.

• Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different color's of rice plants of different varieties have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

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

• The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September. The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields.

• From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.

• Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen. The different varieties of rice plant grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.

• The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Tokyo, where the tradition began in 1993.

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Farmers Planting Rice

Stage 1 Stage 2

Stage 3 Stage 4

Stage 5

rice-art-samurai

napoleon-rice-art

girl-and-boy-rice-art

Doraemon-cool-rice-art

boy-rice-art

Buddha-rice-art

duck-rice-art

girl-rice-art

Japanese-rice-art

Mona Lisa-rice-art

Monkey-rice-art

Monk-rice-art

wave-rice-art

close-up art-at-rice-field

close-up art-at-rice-field

rice-field-close-up

rice-field-close-up

rice-field-close-up

rice-field-close-up

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