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UtamakuraUtamakura (歌枕: jp.) is a Japanese word that either refers to a place name used in a rhetorical manner in Waka (和歌 jp. uta), a style of classical Japanese poetry, or a written list of such place names. Besides the names of Yamato and Yamashiro, 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 late 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 Nouin", the poet and monk of the late Heian period and one of the "36 major poets" of the Japanese Middle Ages, and lists of places in the "Utamakura Nayose (Utamakura reference book)". "Uta" translates as poem and specially means waka, and "makura" literally means pillow. In the context of waka poetry, makura means "Makura Kotoba" (枕詞), or "pillow word". A pillow word in Japanese poetry 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. People go 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 haikai from which developed haiku. 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.
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