Satomi Kakashi Festival

For a month each autumn, scarecrows stand in the event ground at Satomi Fureaikan, in the hills of Hitachiota in the north of Ibaraki Prefecture. They are the work of people of the district and of others from well outside it, and the 2026 festival is the thirty-ninth.

Kakashi is the Japanese word for a scarecrow, but what is entered here goes well beyond what stands in a rice field. Some are made in the old way, of straw and old clothes on a frame. Others take a subject from the year just gone, a film or a public figure or a piece of news, and the organisers state plainly that straw is not required.

The results stand together in the open for a month, in rows across the ground, and the point of coming is to walk among them and read them.

Entries are judged in classes: a general class, a class for small scarecrows, and one for schoolchildren, each with its own prize. In 2025 the general prize went to a figure of Godzilla, made for the seventieth year of the films.

Anyone may enter. Forms go in about a week before the display opens, and the finished scarecrows are brought to the ground over three days before that. The committee that runs the festival is based at the town's tourism association.