The art of Tambo — incredible pictures in the rice fields of Japan

If the origin of crop circles is still a mystery to scientists, the bright figures on the land area of Japan, there is a reasonable explanation. This is the handiwork of talented farmers who know how to use selective breeding to create true masterpieces.

Every year Japanese farmers are sowing in the same field up to 12 varieties of rice with a specific goal — to create living paintings that catch the spirit.

Rice shoots in different shades grow so that gradually appear on the field images of national heroes and cartoon characters. This art is called Tambo.

For almost two thousand years, the inhabitants of the village Inakadate rice is grown, but the tradition is to sow grasses "art" method was born here not so long ago – in 1993.

Then the peasants decided, using different varieties of rice to "draw" on the field, any simple picture. The experiment was successful and since then every year in April, the villagers gather to determine what the painting will be placed in their fields within six months.

When the picture was determined, the peasants accordingly mark the selected field (area of about 15 thousand square meters) and manually begin to sow different varieties of rice. The huge, painstaking work, long days farmers spend knee-deep in the water – these are the features of rice cultivation – but it is done very carefully.

Recent years, the villagers even experience some inconvenience from their creativity. The fact that Inakadate by local standards the village is small, just nine thousand people, the infrastructure here is adequate. And when autumn come to two hundred thousand tourists to enjoy the extraordinary and short-lived piece of art, post them nowhere.

However, now is not only in Inakadate create a field pattern. Other villages began to compete with each other for the honorary title of "the most artistic villages of Japan". Somewhere create paintings based on native Japanese culture, somewhere to take a sample Western.

But in that and in other case, artistically planted fields with the ripening of the rice change colors and the fall are real masterpieces. And when the time comes to harvest, the rice grown on the field-the picture, after processing comes in the most ordinary shops.