Giant Straw Monsters Come Alive in Japan’s Wara Art Festival – Here’s a Sneak Peek!
The annual Wara Art Festival in Niigata City takes the straw leftover from the harvest season and turns them to art.
TripZilla TripZilla inspires travel with guides, tips and stories by our community of travellers in and around Southeast Asia.
As fall wanders into Japan and the season of harvesting begins, straw giants come alive on the northwest coast of Honshu in Niigata City. Larger than humans, the straw animals come in a few forms: a crocodile, rhinoceros, bull, and even a gorilla.
The Wara Art Festival makes use of leftover straws from the harvest in the most innovative way – by turning them into huge straw sculptures!
This festival has been around since 2008 and it is made possible by a collaboration between the city’s tourism division, students from the Musashino Art University, as well as local volunteers.
The straw giants begin as a wooden frame skeleton before rice straws are bundled around it to add meat to the monsters. It takes about two weeks for the straw structures to be completed.
Here’s a preview of the completed artwork in Uwasekigata Park:
This year, the exhibition will be open to the public until 31 Oct 2017. If it’s too late to catch this instalment, be sure to add Japan to your travel plans next fall.