Damn the village full of dummies to replace the dead in Japan, horror fans, don’t miss it

It is no coincidence that dummies or dolls appear very often in movies horrified. It is often considered to be the place where the ghost of the ghost resides, causing many storms to haunt both victims and viewers. Yet there is a village in Japan where there are few people living, but there are several hundred dummies. These dummies are placed all over the village with all different poses and expressions, from the elderly to children.
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Japan is famous for being a country with an aging population, which means that the birth rate in this country is extremely low. In rural areas or remote mountainous areas, there is no shortage of villages on the verge of disappearing as the population dwindles. Nagoro, located in the southern part of Shikoku Island, is a prime example, with only about 30 people remaining. However, what makes Nagoro a special village in the eyes of tourists are the hundreds of life-size effigies that appear all over the village.

The story began more than a decade ago when a woman named Ayano Tsukimi planted a tree, but the seed could not grow. She then decided to make an effigy of her deceased father to take her place. Faced with the situation of Japan’s aging population and young people who dream of working in big cities, the number of people living in villages is decreasing day by day. To fill the sadness and loneliness, Ms. Tsukimi began to make more effigies to replace the dead and those who left the village did not return. To Nagoro, visitors can find more than 400 scarecrows scattered across fields, roadsides and in houses.
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Dummies are often made from cloth, newspaper and old clothes with all different poses and expressions. There are dolls fishing by the stream, there are pictures of farmers sitting together by the roadside, some people are working in the fields, some people are waiting for the bus,… At the closed school At the door of the village because there were no children living there, Ms. Tsukimi filled the classrooms with fake schoolboys and girls sitting on the desks, and the teacher and the principal did the same. Ms. Tsukimi and the villagers were all so used to the presence of these dummies, they even greeted and chatted with the dummies before leaving the house.

“I think not everyone likes the dummies I make. A lot of people don’t tell me directly, but I know they can get scared because they look so real,” Tsukimi said.
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Indeed, for first-time visitors to the village, it is inevitable to feel a chill down the spine. Because these dummies are mostly full of smiles, but they look quite… horror. However, the curious nature still makes many people still choose this village as a tourist destination. If you want a “virtual” tour of Nagoro, you can use the Google Street View feature at THIS.​