Way
better than Crop Circles - Rice Fields of Japan
Stunning
crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan , but this
is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted.
Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye.
Instead,
different color rice plants 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.A
Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds
of thousands of rice plants.
The
colors are created by using different varieties. This photo
was taken in Inakadate , Japan .
Napoleon
on horseback can be seen from the skies.
This
was created by precision planting and months of planning by
villagers and farmers located in Inkadate , Japan .
Fictional
warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are featured
on the television series Tenchijin,appear in fields in the town
of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan .
This
year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas
of Japan , including designs of deer dancers.
Smaller
works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of
Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers. The farmers
create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed
Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a
Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the time between
planting and harvesting in September. The murals in Inakadate
cover 15,000 square meters 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 the thousands of rice
plants in the paddy fields can be seen.
Rice-paddy
art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project,
an idea that grew from meetings of the village committees.
The
different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other
to create the masterpieces.
In
the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers
grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas
grew more complicated and attracted more attention.
In
2005, agreements between landowners allowed the creation of
enormous rice paddy art.
A
year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting
of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the
images to life.