Waka, Japanese poetry, is a time-honored means of expressing intangible sensations and emotions, without shape or form, through tangible objects. Embedding feelings in the constantly changing natural world as well as a host of other things, the Japanese of the past expressed their emotions, their hearts, in poetry. Above all, they felt compelled to compose poetry about beautiful landscapes.
As certain places were included in poems again and again, specific images became attached to them, developing into widely shared poetic tropes. Even if one had never experienced the actual landscape, the shared image of it made it possible to express one’s feelings through an allusion to it. Those places with which specific images are associated, through waka, are what we now call utamakura, “poem pillows.” An utamakura place name is the pillow, the platform, on which a poem rests.
Utamakura, having taken shape as Japanese emotional landscapes, went on to develop a deep relationship with the visual arts. Paintings of famous places, based on the lyrical images of the utamakura, rather than the actual scenes, and craft objects decorated with utamakura-inspired designs: the utamakura has, through the cultivation of allusions across many media, enriched the content of Japanese art.
How, though, can we today, in a world in which waka and classic literature are not rooted in our daily lives, share utamakura? In this exhibition, we introduce the emotional landscapes that many Japanese persons once would have been able to call to mind, and the world of utamakura, in an attempt to share once again the poetic tropes, the wealth of emotion and visualization embedded in Japanese art.