Thanks to photographers Molly Des Jardin (cat slide), Ethan and Kohmura Masao (Fomal Haut) for these photos of rural Japanese houses. So few materials, so harmoniously put together. Many of the photos are from an open air museum in Japan, where traditional houses from different regions have been transported and reconstructed. The beautiful horse is a straw toy; click on the image for more information on traditional uses of straw, whether practical or ritual.

The bottom photo shows a functioning scarecrows made of indigo-dyed hemp. The original book caption reads “The bold design of this piece of shibori-dyed hemp by Seizo Ishikawa, a farmer, seems at home working as a scarecrow by a newly harvested rice field.” The birds in Japan must have been accustomed to seeing farmers in real Japanese indigo yukatas, waving their arms. In the top photo, however, the proximity to the house suggests mainly the traditional Japanese method of drying kimono, yukata and other garments, but it probably conveniently doubled as a scarecrow. The target design is interesting, perhaps suggesting part of an eye? From the excellent book Japan Country Living: Spirit, Tradition, Style by Amy Sylvester Katoh, photographs by Shin Kimura, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan, 1993. Kimura’s work has also appeared in Met Home and Paris Vogue. Also see their excellent book Japan: The Art of Living.

From the National Museum: of Ethnography in Japan: “At the end of the Edo period, when the exhibited house was constructed, villagers of Akiyama mainly grew beans and such millet grains as cockspur, foxtail millet, and buckwheat. On the special occasion in the middle of January, called Little New Year, villagers made rice cakes in the shape of all these crops, stuck them on tree branches to depict an abundant harvest [see branches above with white blossoms], and prayed for a generous harvest in that year.” We’re a bit late, since this festival would have taken place a couple of weeks ago. But these sprays made from real branches studded with blossoms of rice cake or flour paste would be beautiful all year.

Years ago I saw a similar thing in the master potter Kawai Kanjiro’s house, now a museum in Kyoto (below). The museum guide said that the flower arrangement was done by mixing a rice paste, colouring it pale pink and attaching and drying daubs of it to real branches. It’s very beautiful in person – the small bits of paste are abstract and crinkled, not actually flowers at all, but the effect is more flower-like than any fake flowers. It would be nice to try this, even if this form of sympathetic magic means nothing to a city dweller compared to what it would mean to a farmer worried about the year’s harvest.