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自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です

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Valley of the Dolls

 


Foreign Affairsのメールマガジンでこのドキュメンタリーを知りました。

等身大の人形が住民より多い徳島の集落 ドイツ人制作のドキュメンタリー、海外でも話題に【画像】
The Huffington Post | 執筆者: 中野渉
投稿日: 2014年06月06日 06時49分 JST
ドイツの映画制作者フリッツ・シューマンさんのドキュメンタリー映像「Valley of Dolls(人形の谷)」が、海外で話題となっている。徳島県の山あいの限界集落で等身大の人形を作り続ける女性と、人形を捉えた作品だ。

舞台は三好市東祖谷(いや)の名頃(なごろ)地区。ここでは過疎化と高齢化が進む。綾野月美さん(64)は11年前に大阪から名頃に戻り、その翌年、畑の鳥獣対策として父に似せたかかし(人形)を作った。それが始まりだった。綾野さんは、大阪に夫と娘を残し、現在は父親と2人で暮らしているという。


Foreign Affairsではフリッツシューマンさん自ら記事を書いています。

Valley of the Dolls
Japan's Disappearing Villages

By Fritz Schumann
MARCH 29, 2015

I visited Nagoro in November 2013 to film my documentary, Valley of the Dolls, and to introduce Tsukimi’s strange creations to a Western audience for the first time. When I arrived, Nagoro was eerily silent. There were no murmurs or conversations, no humming of machines, and no shouts of playing children. Only the Iya River made a steady noise, gushing down its valley. The lone road to the town is just a single lane, twisting and turning alongside the mountain and shrouded in complete darkness at night. A visiting car is a rare sight in this village, situated high in the mountains and one hour away from the next traffic intersection. Yet, almost all travelers who pass through stop once they see the dolls.
Tsukimi made all her dolls by hand out of wood, cotton, old paper, and donated clothes. She says that for her, the lips are one of the hardest parts to get right. “A little tweak and they can look angry,” she told me. But, “I’m very good at making grandmothers. I pull the strings at the mouth and they smile.” At least 70 of her dolls sit, stand, or crouch just outside her house and she has placed another 20 inside her living room. The rest are scattered throughout the village and the eastern side of the Iya Valley. Altogether, Tsukimi believes she has created at least 350 dolls over the last eleven years. But she hasn’t kept count and isn’t sure that number is right. The dolls, which initially served as scarecrows, last up to three years, so she has had to fix and replace them quite often. Sometimes, she even forgets where she has put them.



他のメディアでは三面記事的扱いですが、Foreign Affairsはお堅い外交専門誌とあって、しっかり背景も取り上げています。こういう知識を仕込んでおくと英検1級や国連英検の面接が楽になるでしょうね。

The Japanese government has been aware of the looming ghost-town problem—of shrinking communities in mountain regions or islands—since the 1960s, when mass urban migration first began. Over the years, Tokyo has passed a number of laws and reforms to address the lack of development in remote areas. But most of them failed or were shortsighted.

The government’s initial approach in the 1960s was to create self-supporting communities that do not require outside aid or labor to survive. In the case of Nagoro, a dam was built to power the valley, which largely lacked electricity even late into the second half of the twentieth century. For a time, the concept of self-sustainability worked. Several hundred people moved back to Nagoro and the town thrived. But after construction wrapped up, they all left for the cities again. The dam still stands.

Since the self-support era, Tokyo has introduced at least one new plan a decade to improve rural development. Ideas have ranged from providing financial incentives to attract returnees to creating more construction projects. The current approach, introduced by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s administration in the early 2000s, harks back to the idea of self-sustaining communities. This plan promotes local agriculture and food production. The concept is to use empty spaces for farming, which could create jobs, generate tourism, or, at the very least, provide a pastime and livelihood for senior citizens. That would, in turn, create a market for healthy, locally produced food, in which urban areas might show interest.

シューマンさんは2013年にこのドキュメンタリーを作成したそうですが、昨年から今年にかけてBBCなども含めて記事にしているようです。まあ、面白い人がいるという視点にならざるを得ない感じですが。。。



Explore the hidden Japanese village where dolls replace the departed
By Aaron Souppouris on May 2, 2014 06:17 am

The depopulated Japanese village that became a real life doll's house: People left behind replace rneighbours who moved away with bizarre SCARECROWS
Tsukimi Ayano made the mannequins to replace neighbours in her town
She lives in Nagoro, a village left all but abandoned by population decline
It is typical of thousands of rural communities across Japan
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAMIEN GAYLE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 11:33 GMT, 8 December 2014 |

Valley of the Dollsというタイトルの映画が昔あったようです。今ならそのままカタカナでバレーオブドールとなったかもしれませんが、当時は「哀愁の花びら」という日本語訳がついています。



哀愁の花びら
1968年8月1日公開


ジャクリーン・スーザンのベスト・セラー小説『人形の谷』を、「明日泣く」のヘレン・ドイッチェと「ペペ」のドロシー・キングスレイが脚色、「名誉と栄光のためでなく」のマーク・ロブソンが監督にあたった芸能界を舞台にした若い3人の女性たちのドラマ。

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