Winds

UNESCO Courier, Jan, 1986 by Sei Shonagon

Winds

A stormy wind. At dawn, when one is lying in bed with the lattices and panelled doors wide open, the wind suddenly blows into the room and stings one's face-- most delightful.

A cold, wintry wind.

In the Third Month the moist, gentle wind that blows in the evenings moves me greatly.

Also moving is the cool, rainy wind in the Eighth and Ninth Months. Streaks of rain are blown violently from the side, and I enjoy watching people cover their stiff robes of unlined silk with the padded coats that they put away after the summer rains. In this season they would like to dispense even with their unlined robes, which have become quite sweltering; instead they are caught off guard by the sudden change in weather and have to dress still more warmly than before.

Towards the end of the Ninth Month and the beginning of the Tenth the sky is clouded over, there is a strong wind, and the yellow leaves fall gently to the ground, especially from the cherry trees and the elms. All this produces a most pleasant sense of melancholy. In the Tenth Month I love gardens that are full of trees.

On the day after a fierce autumn wind everything moves one deeply. The garden is in a pitiful state with all the bamboo and lattice fence knocked over and lying next to each other on the ground. It is bad enough if the branches of one of the great trees have been broken by the wind; but it is a really painful surprise to find that the tree itself has fallen down and is now lying flat over the bush-clover and the valerians. As one sits in one's room looking out, the wind, as though on purpose, gently blows the leaves one by one through the chinks of the lattice-window, and one finds it hard to believe that this is the same wind which yesterday raged so violently.

On one such morning I caught sight of a woman creeping out from the main hall and emerging a few feet on to the veranda. I could see that she was a natural beauty. Over a dress of dull purple she wore an unlined robe of tawny cloth and a formal robe of some light material. The noise of the wind must have kept her awake during the night and she had just got up after sleeping late. Now she knelt on the veranda and looked into her mirror. With her long hair being blown about and gently puffed up by the wind, she was a truly splendid sight. As she gazed at the scene of desolation in the garden, a girl of about seventeen--not a small girl, but still not big enough to be called grown-up--joined her on the veranda. She wore a night-dress of light violet and over that a faded blue robe of stiff silk, which was badly coming apart at the seams and wet from the rain. Her hair, which was cut evenly at the ends like miscanthus in a field, reached all the way down to her feet, falling on to the veranda beyond the bottom of her robe. Looking at her from the side, I could make out the scarlet of her trouser-skirt, the only bright touch in her costume.

In the garden a group of maids and young girls were collecting the flowers and plants that the wind had torn up by the roots and were propping up some that were less damaged. Several women were gathered in front of me by the blind, and I enjoyed seeing how envious they looked as they watched the young people outside and wished that they might join them.