--- title: Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village description: It's 150 scarecrows vs. 35 elderly residents canonical: https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/ author: NBC News article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-16T21:48:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:17:44.101Z og:title: Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village og:description: It's 150 scarecrows vs. 35 elderly residents og:url: https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc3d9f11a1b35af/698783d7428a9ec51ccc7a73/scarecrows.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Scarecrows og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village twitter:description: It's 150 scarecrows vs. 35 elderly residents twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc3d9f11a1b35af/698783d7428a9ec51ccc7a73/scarecrows.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village by [NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## NBC News Mar 16, 2015 9:48 PM UTC  Getty Images by [NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## NBC News Mar 16, 2015 9:48 PM UTC A village in Japan has four times as many scarecrows as people. And it’s all thanks to one woman — and more than a decade of work. Tsukimi Ayano said she made her first scarecrow 13 years ago in the likeness of her father as a tribute to him after his death. Since then, she’s made more than 350 life-sized dolls but, like their human counterparts, they don’t last forever, so about 150 of them remain in Nagoro, a village in southern Japan. Still, with a population of 35, the scarecrows outnumber the people in Nagoro by a good amount, acting as replacements for… [Read the rest of the story from out partners at NBC News.](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/weird-news/scarecrows-outnumber-people-more-hundred-tiny-japan-village-n324501) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/"},"headline":"Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village","datePublished":"2015-03-16T21:48:08.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:17:44.101Z","description":"It's 150 scarecrows vs. 35 elderly residents","url":"https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Japan","Bizarre","Population"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc3d9f11a1b35af/698783d7428a9ec51ccc7a73/scarecrows.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"NBC News","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nbc-news/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc3d9f11a1b35af/698783d7428a9ec51ccc7a73/scarecrows.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Scarecrows","caption":"","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3746895/scarecrows-people-japan/","name":"Scarecrows Outnumber People in Tiny Japanese Village"}}]}] ```