Art at Work

Crows see a good deal of native folk art in Japan, and sheer away from it on sight. G.I.s got a chance to inspect the same art at closer range last week when the farmers of the little village of Narita topped off a four-day summer festival with an exhibition of their best new scarecrows.

Narita's 800 houses nestle in the rice paddies two hours west of Tokyo. All but 13 of the townspeople's 51 entries were eliminated before the show opened. The locally prominent portraitist Kiichi Okubo, who had been elected judge, thought they failed to meet the exacting best standards of a country where people look for art, as well as craft, in familiar things.

The prizewinner was a five-foot straw woman with a lifelike straw baby on her back. The baby did the scaring, with a toy windmill whose blades swung in the wind. From the woman's belt dangled a paper banner inscribed: "Increase Production."

Second prize went to an up-to-date high-school boy for a straw man with burned-out radio tubes for eyes and a larger tube for a tongue. Tin flaps made its cylindrical head revolve in the breeze, scouring every corner of the paddy with its goggle eyes. Mused Judge Okubo: "Scientific and effective."

Also-rans included a tight-trousered farmer holding two Japanese flags, two old soldiers with elaborate monkey faces, and a tall samurai (honorable warrior) dolled up in a black kimono and sporting real hair wound into a topknot. The show's general manager, a weathered old farmer who looked more like a scarecrow than some of the exhibits, was moved to remark with a sly smile that "samurai now hold no terror for crows."

The victorious artist, a conscientious young father of four, stayed around just long enough to pick up his prize--a half-gallon aluminum night soil ladle. Then he collected his straw masterpiece and trudged off to set it to work in his rice paddy.

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