The retelling of the origins of this performance have resulted in the development of a unique, local entertainment of song and dance. As the story goes, about three hundred laborers from Amura went to work on the reclamation of Ozaya New Land (now Kagami Town in Yatsushiro). One of the workers was a pretty girl, named Okiku – kiku meaning ‘chrysanthemum flower’. Okiku was very beautiful, good-natured, and a hard worker. She fell in love with the construction supervisor and this romance was written up as a labor song: “I want to put Amura's beautiful bloom, Okiku, in a flower bed - that I do! Oh, to compare her to the other blooms.” In fact, Okiku was a real person, who later returned to Amura and married a young, local man, and passed away in 1879 at the age of 76.