Amazing Rice Field Art

These pictures probably have been making the email rounds, and you might have seen them before. But I just got them from my son. I’d never seen them before and was amazed. So I’ll share them.

Rice fields in Japan have been transformed into art – naturally, but with some help by creative farmers who used rice plants with different-colored leaves to create the designs. As the planting season progresses, the images emerge.

Rice-paddy art began in 1993 as a local revitalization project. Farmers in the town of Inakadate use purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with the green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the patterns, which cover 15,000 square meters of paddy fields. Computers are used to precisely plot the planting of four differently colored rice varieties.

Click on the pictures to see larger, clearer images.

A Sengoku warrior

Napoleon on horseback

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife Osen

Doraemon and deer dancers

Close-up showing careful placement of thousands of rice plants

Different varieties of rice plants are used