8/16/2007

Inanimate Objects Imbued with Strange & Uncanny Power…Chucky, come out to play.
— Simon Sellars’ travelog

These Japanese scarecrows made with mannequin heads are freaky, don’t you think?
I’m back from the Rice Ranch with heatstroke, zillion insect bites and nightmarish memories of Japanese scarecrows. In addition, the rice paddies have carbide canons firing blank shots randomly all night. Farmers put these scare-guns called odoshi-zutsu (威し銃）in their rice paddies to frighten away the sparrows and crows as harvest time nears.

Of course these recycled hairstyling mannequin heads were not always used for scarecrows. Traditionally the face of kakashi—scarecrows had the hiragana characters, “Henohenomoheji (へのへのもへじ) or hehenonomoheji (へへののもへじ) drawn on their faces.

As you can see below, the outline of the face is drawn with the character “ji.” Then first two “he” characters make up the eyebrows, the “no” characters are the eyes, the nose is “mo”, and mouth is another “he” character.

For an interesting photo essay on Japanese scarecrows, check out: modern scarecrow.
And, check out the city cousin of these scarecrows, “Wig-kun” at PinkTentacle.com.