Tokyo Tiki-God meets stoned Cyclops
Update…
The Tokyo Tiki-God invasion of Japan continues and is joined by a stoned Cyclops!
A man walks past a giant sculpture on a downtown Tokyo street, in Japan, news.yahoo.com (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa)
previous post of May 27, 2007…
Faux tiki god invasion of Japan
In the previous report, ‘Borat turning Japanesey and Moai-Tiki gods concur’, you might have been wondering why there a fake Easter Island Moai tiki god statue in hyper-trendy Shibya, Tokyo. 
Me too.
I’ve been bumping into Moai statues and wondering about these fake Tokyo Tiki gods for many years now. Besides the famous Shibuya Moai (above left & below right), I have several Moai by my Ota Ward Office (below left).
Actually, the Ota Ward Office and Kamata Station area of Tokyo has a full alien invasion of Moai statues and I have taken the photos below of just a few of them.
All these Moai statues seem to be rather out of place in Tokyo. Finally, a few days ago I stumbled across the very “Japanese” reason for all of them.
It seems that back in 1988 the Tokyo island of Nijima gave all these Moai statues to Tokyo to commemorate 100 years of being under Tokyo’s administrative supervision. The only industry of Nijima Island is tourism and quarrying Koga (rhyolite) stone, which is mostly used to make “moyai art.” In this case, public works to give jobs to the otherwise unemployed in the off-season Nijima folks by making hundreds of Moai heads that are given as public art “gifts” all over Japan.
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