Utamakura
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Utamakura (歌枕: jp.), literally meaning "pillow of waka" in Japanese, is a rhetorical concept of Japanese poetry. It mainly refers to a place name used in a rhetorical manner in uta, or in another name waka, a style of classical Japanese poetry. Derivatively it refers also a written list of such place names. "Uta" translates as poem and specially means waka in the Japanese literature tradition.
Utamakura are locations which were familiar to the court of ancient Japan, utamakura include:
- particularly sacred Shinto and Buddhist sites,
- places where historic events occurred, and
- places that trigger a separate mental association through a pun.
As an example of the last, Machikaneyama, the name of a hill that translates as 'long-waiting mountain', was used poetically to refer to someone who waited for a person or a thing, especially a moonrise. Also, in the middle Heian period when quotation or rearrangement of old waka became a favored technique, the place names found in old poems were increasingly used as utamakura.
The history of utamakura is found in documents on the study of poetry such of as the Utamakura of Noin, consumed by Noin, the waka poet and monk of the late Heian period, and lists of places in the Utamakura Nayose (Utamakura reference book).
Makura means literally pillow, in the context of waka however means makurakotoba (枕詞). A makurakotoba is a word that links to another subject that may seem unrelated if one is not aware of the utamakura reference. "Makura" in other contexts means source, the opening of, or sources of the opening of conversations.
Eager waka poets went sightseeing to the regions, locations and sites of utamakura. Beyond becoming familiar with the actual scenery of the poems, it is reentering the locale of a poem or story and the result of the fantasy may be said to be creation of an image far from the actual world.
Utamakura was used also in renga including haikai no renga. In renga, the first phrase should contain a seasonal term (kigo) to each hokku (a 5-7-5 syllables verse from which develops renga or appreciated as an independent poem like haiku is today), but Matsuo Basho required if an Utamakura comes up into a hokku, then no seasonal term must appear for the sake of much complication of images, hence it should be a verse independent from a particular season.