Oroshi

Oroshi (颪, lit. 'down wind') is the Japanese term for a wind blowing strong down the slope of a mountain, occasionally as strong gusts of wind which can cause damage. Oroshi is a strong local wind across the Kanto Plain on the Pacific Ocean side of central Honshu. This term identifies a katabatic wind.

The Oroshi wind which causes unpredictable damage -- Mafū (魔風, lit. 'devilish wind', 1853)

Literary references

The Oroshi wind is mentioned in Japanese poetry, including a poem which is included in the Hyakunin Isshu.

ukarikeru
hito wo hatsuse no
yama-oroshi yo
hageshikare to ha
inoranu mono wo
  — Minamoto no Toshiyori

    Make that heartless
woman, O mountain storm
    of Hatsuse Temple,
crueller still!" – this is not
what I prayed for, and yet ...

An impression of Futen the Wind Deity by Hanabusa Itcho, late-17th–early-18th century.

Many versions of this poem which were published during the Edo period have yama-oroshi instead of yama-oroshi yo, but the meaning is equivalent: the poet cries out to the wind; and he compares the cold down-draft to the heartless woman.

Oroshi is also a character in "La Horde du Contre-vent", an adventure book written by Alain Damasio, a french writer. In this story, Oroshi is the name of a wind mistress, she can read the wind as it is paper.

See also

• Halny
• Piteraq – cold katabatic wind which originates on the Greenlandic icecap and sweeps down the east coastPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• Santa Ana winds – California weather phenomenon
• Williwaw – Sudden blast of wind descending from a mountainous coast to the sea

References

• Kishō Kenkyūjo (気象研究所). (1969). Papers in Meteorology and Geophysics (気象研究所研究報告), Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 111–174, 126 Tokyo, Meteorological Research Institute. OCLC 1761858
• Mostow, Joshua S., ed. (1996). Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1705-3; OCLC 645187818
• Simpson, John E. (1994). Sea Breeze and Local Winds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521452113; OCLC 243798029