Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan.

But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planted

Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye.

Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge





Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan. The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September.

The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields.
From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.


Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings of the village committee

Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants; the color's created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan.

More than 150,000 visitors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields. Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture. This year's design shows the fictional 16th-century samurai warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives feature in television series Tenchijin.

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife Osen appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa, Japan.