Every year, a Japanese village in northern Aomori Prefecture creates field-sized, living, 3D paintings made of coloured rice shoots.

From ground level, it didn’t look like much. In fact, the scene looked like a lot of rural Japan: rice paddies with tender shoots in shades of green, rippling in the wind and stretching off into the horizon. Bucolic, surely, but nothing unusual.

But as I ascended the viewing platform and took the longer view, something started to emerge.