Rice paddy art puts Japan village on the map

A remote Japanese village with rice fields and not much else has put itself on the tourist map with eye-catching artworks painstakingly created one rice stalk at a time.

Best viewed from above, the sports-field-sized masterpieces of Inakadate village are created by more than 1,000 locals and outside volunteers using rice varieties in five different colours.

This year's motif is a 12th-century warrior monk battling a child swordsman - but in the past the villagers have also used images of Napoleon, Mona Lisa and Mount Fuji as seen by woodblock print master Sharaku.

Tourists climb a nearby observation deck to marvel at the vast rice pictures, created on a 1.5-hectare (3.7-acre) field.

Pictures are made with rice varieties in ordinary green, as well as purple and yellow from old native varieties, red from conventional crossbreeding and a white strain that resulted from a genetic mutation.

The design is specially adjusted for best viewing from the deck, said village official Minoru Nakayama.

"If you were to see the image from right above it, the character's head on the farther side from the tower would look oddly big," he said.

"They are calculated to be true to the laws of perspective."

The rice paddy art, which started in 1993 in the village and has since been copied by scores of other places in Japan, drew 170,000 tourists last year to Inakadate, about 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Tokyo.

But the campaign hasn't made the village rich.

Inakadate asks visitors only to give donations, which reached seven million yen (80,000 dollars) last year, most of which was spent on leasing the paddies, guarding the watch tower and buying the rice seeds