This is my second visit to Nagoro, the famous Village of Dolls. I’d been there five years earlier and spent a day with Tsukimi Ayano. I’d imagined meeting her at the time, and she came to look for me with her laughing eyes and an insatiable desire to tell me all, show me all.
She opened the doors of the abandoned school and several other houses so I could find out more about her dolls.
How old was she then? Is she still there today? I admit to feeling uneasy at the thought of meeting a woman very different from my memories. But I’m used to this feeling, like all of us who live far away from their own folk – hoping to come back to a dear place and relive good times as if nothing had changed.
The population of Nagoro, like most villages in Japan, is falling fast. In 2002 Tsukimi Ayano, a villager who’d spent part of her life as an Osaka housewife, came back home. She used to love making little dolls, but it was after resettling in Nagoro that she made her first scarecrow – a giant figure that looked like her father – to guard a field.
After the amused reactions of her neighbours, she decided to make more. She began to craft the images of people who’d moved away or died, or were just passing through. This village, with barely 20 residents, is now home to over 300 dolls! Each with their own name, personality, age and backstory catalogued.
Here I am again in the narrow alley that runs through the village. I recognise some dolls, others seem to have disappeared, some seem new to me. The same dog as five years ago – Leon-chan – still attached to his lead, howls from his heap of stones. And just then a boxy little car pulls up beside me, a Nissan Roox. It’s Tsukimi Ayano back from the shops!
Of course she’d forgotten me, so she promptly offers to show me around. She tells me about her growing activities, her village now full of life with so many visitors, her doll-making workshops. The dolls even have their own festival on the first Sunday of October!
At the bus stop I spot a new doll, flaunting a stars and stripes tie. Wait a sec … could it be Trump? Of course not, she laughs! Everybody thinks it’s Trump, but it’s Pakkun, an American celebrity (talento) in Japan! He’s visited Nagoro, and what’s more doesn’t think much of Trump. She shows me some flyers: so beautifully illustrated, they explain how to make a doll. Scraps of wood, wire, newspaper, fabric … They also tell the story of the village, introduced as: “a village where people and scarecrows live together in harmony”.
Some seem to think this an absurd idea, sheer madness even, but you only have to visit Nagoro to realise that it’s the opposite. An ode to the love of people, life and those moments you never want to forget.
Night falls fast on this little village in the hollow of the Tokushima mountains. The dolls begin to cast gigantic frightening shadows. The crows, more at ease at that time of day, land here and there against a purple sky with the aggressive kaa! kaa! cry that gives the birds their name, karasu. Time for me to leave, and let Tsukimi Ayano go home.
I wonder what she dreams about at night … maybe a world of dolls, with a mysterious settlement lost in the mountains?
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