[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]Copied and pasted an email of this amazing artwork by Japanese farmers....[/SPAN][/FONT]
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[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan . [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planted.[/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"][/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. [/SPAN][/FONT]
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[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]Instead, [/SPAN][/FONT][FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the [SPAN style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #0066cc 1px dashed; CURSOR: hand" id=lw_1250714891_4 class=yshortcuts]paddy fields[/SPAN].
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.[/SPAN][/FONT]
A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants,
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]the colours created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan
The largest and finest work is grown in the [SPAN style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; CURSOR: hand" id=lw_1250714891_5 class=yshortcuts]Aomori[/SPAN] village of Inakadate , 600 miles north of Toyko, [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]where the tradition began in 1993.
The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.
More than 150,000 vistors come to Inakadate, [/SPAN][/FONT][FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals.
Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers [/SPAN][/FONT][FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields.[/SPAN][/FONT][/DIV][FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"][/SPAN][/FONT][/DIV][FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"][/SPAN][/FONT]
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Napolean on horseback can be seen from the skies, [FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]created by precision planting and months of planning between villagers and farmers in Inkadate[/SPAN][/FONT]
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Fictional warrior [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_6 class=yshortcuts]Naoe Kanetsugu[/SPAN] and his wife Osen appear in fields in the town of [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_7 class=yshortcuts]Yonezawa , Japan[/SPAN]
And over the past few years, other villages have joined in with the plant designs.
Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_8 class=yshortcuts]Yonezawa[/SPAN] in the [SPAN style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #0066cc 1px dashed; CURSOR: hand" id=lw_1250714891_9 class=yshortcuts]Yamagata prefecture[/SPAN].
This year's design shows the fictional 16th-century [SPAN style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; CURSOR: hand" id=lw_1250714891_10 class=yshortcuts]samurai warrior[/SPAN] Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, [FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]Osen, whose [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]lives feature in television series Tenchijin.
Various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan this year, [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]including designs of deer dancers.
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Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_11 class=yshortcuts]Doraemon[/SPAN] and deer dancers
The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September.
The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields. [/SPAN][/FONT]
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_12 class=yshortcuts]mock castle tower[/SPAN] of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.
Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings of the village committee.[/SPAN][/FONT]
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Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen
The different varieties of rice plant 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 [SPAN id=lw_1250714891_13 class=yshortcuts]Mount Iwaki[/SPAN] every year.
But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.
[FONT size=2 face="Times New Roman"][SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt"]In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art.
A year later, organisers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life.[/SPAN][/FONT]
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