A Japanese woman has filled a village with dolls as the population in the area declines. Chris Meyers reports.

The taciturn dolls are scattered around the town of Nagoro and vastly outnumber the 35 human residents.

They are all creations of 65-year-old Tsukimi Ayano.

She started making them originally as scarecrows to rid her fields of birds.

But it's now a hobby that is populating the otherwise empty town. 

"From here on out as well, as long as I'm healthy I plan to keep making scarecrows. I enjoy it and I hope people can enjoy them too as I want to make them even more life-like, so that people will have to look twice and say 'Oh that wasn't a person,'" she said.

To date, Ayano has stitched 350 dolls and around 150 can be seen around town now.

They get replaced when they become too damaged by the elements. But they've had no effect on the crow population.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.