High in the mountains of Shikoku, in Japan's Tokushima Prefecture, sits Nagoro, a village that once had over 300 residents and now has fewer than 30. What makes Nagoro unusual is not simply its decline, a familiar story across rural Japan, but what one resident chose to do about it. Since the early 2000s, local artist Tsukimi Ayano has handcrafted more than 350 life-size dolls, placing them throughout the village to replace neighbours who have died or moved away. The village's old elementary school, closed since 2012 after its last two students graduated, now sits filled with doll children at their desks, doll teachers at the chalkboard, a classroom frozen in a version of village life that stopped happening for real years ago.
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