Nagoro — the scarecrow village

300 scarecrows in a closed school: each one has a name in the ‘village register’.

In the hamlet of Nagoro, 800 metres above sea level in the Iya Valley, over 300 handmade scarecrows populate houses, fields and the former elementary school, closed for lack of pupils: they sit at the desks, work in the fields, chat at the crossroads. A ‘scarecrow civil register’ gives each one a name and a character. The altitude, with views hanging over the valley, earns it the nickname ‘village in the sky’.

Hamlet in the municipality of Miyoshi, in the eastern Iya Valley, depopulated like many mountain settlements of inland Shikoku; the scarecrows are the work of a single resident, begun in the early 2000s.

ℹ️ Free entry; car park 300 metres uphill, in the former schoolyard of Nagoro Elementary School.

🚉 Nagoro-shita 名頃下 · in front of the station

Sources: awanavi.jp · miyoshi-city.jp

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