Utamakura

The fact that people have become interested in historic places of interest is also largely due to the power of the Utamakura, ‘song pillow’. These are places of interest that have been repeatedly mentioned in waka poems, from Sotogahama, Shiogama and Sue no Matsuyama in the north to Hakata, Dazaifu and Tsushima in the south, with a rough count of more than two hundred places of interest. Among the most popular were Shirakawa no Seki, Tago no Ura, Tatsuta River and Mt Osaka.