On three days of the year, Fujin, the Japanese god of the wind, swoops in and his bag of gales bursts open.
Folk wisdom marks these days as the most perilous in terms of storms: the 210th and 220th day from the start of spring, and Hassaku, the first day of the eighth lunar month.
They come just as rice heads bend heavy in the fields - exactly when a single typhoon could flatten a year’s work. The 210th day usually falls around September 1, the 220th around September 11–20, both squarely within typhoon season. In 2025, Hassaku will arrive on September 22, another date to watch the skies.
It is no accident, then, that rituals are conducted during this season to stop that bag of winds from opening too wide.
Festivals to Avert Storms
When the rice bows heavy, communities across Japan plead with the air through fuchin-sai: wind-calming festivals.
This is regarded as the year's most important annual observance at Tatsuta Taisha, a Shinto shrine in Misato town, Nara prefecture. The event begins a week before the first Sunday of July, with sacred meals offered to the gods twice a day, every day.
On the seventh day, the festival concludes with drum and dance offerings as well as a feast of fireworks.
North of Nara, on the Japan Sea side, the people of Yaotsu town in Toyama prefecture dance for three days and three nights to appease the wind.
Owara Kaze no Bon runs from September 1–3, a period which falls into the same window as the dreaded 210th day. Lanterns glow in the old town as dancers move to the strains of haunting music from the shamisen and kokyu fiddle.
Some of the dancers wear kimono with the word for wind on their sleeves. The festival’s name, Kaze no Bon, signals its purpose: the quieting of the wind because a single storm can mean the difference between feast and famine.
The Shinto Gods of the Wind
Who exactly is being appeased in these wind-calming rituals? In the land of yaoyorozu no kami - eight million gods - it comes as no surprise to find more than one wind deity.
Among the earliest is Shinatsuhiko no Mikoto and his female version, Shinatobe, who some traditions regard as a separate goddess of the wind.
According to the Nihon Shoki chronicle, Shinatsuhiko was born after Izanagi and Izanami created eight islands of Japan. When morning mists veiled the newborn land, Izanagi blew them away and from that breath rose a wind god.
Etymology sheds further light: the 'shi' in 'Shinatsu' may mean wind, as in arashi, or storm. Some scholars parse 'shina' as 'long wind', while others read 'shinato' as a doorway from which winds blow.
Fujin: From Greece to Japan via the Underworld
In Japan, storms are not faceless. Fujin, the god of the wind, and his brother Raijin, the god of thunder, stand as two of the most recognizable figures in Japanese mythology.
Their story begins in the underworld. When the creator god Izanagi descended to Yomi in search of his dead wife Izanami, he found her rotting and covered with maggots. Terrified, he fled, pursued by a hellish horde.
Out of that spectral chase burst the figures of Fujin and Raijin, who managed to get past the boulder Izanagi used to block the entrance to the underworld.
By the Muromachi period (1336-1573), the image of Fujin had solidified: a blue oni demon with a bag containing gales, close to the form recognized today.
That bag was a Silk Road import originating in Greece - not Hermes but Boreas. When Alexander the Great and his armies conquered the Persian Empire and pushed into Egypt, Central Asia and even India, they left behind more than soldiers. Greek culture and iconography spread with them and, in the Hellenistic dynasties that followed, the Greek wind god Boreas crossed international borders.
He took on new forms in new lands - in the Tarim Basin, Chinese frescoes show Feng Po (Uncle Wind), another figure with disheveled hair and a bulging bag of wind. By the sixth century, when Buddhism entered Japan, this iconography traveled with it, giving rise to the present-day image of Fujin.
Sotatsu and the Spread of Storm Icons
The most celebrated representation of Fujin and his brother is a 17th-century painting on gold-foil panels by artist Tawaraya Sotatsu.
The Wind God and Thunder God Screens - Fujin Raijin-zu Byobu - depict Fujin striding on the right, wind bag aloft, while Raijin hurls thunder.
Designated a National Treasure in the modern age, the screens also inspired later masters Ogata Korin and Sakai Hoitsu, who produced homages that helped to codify the two gods as icons in Japanese design and pop culture.
Another striking version of the storm brothers greets millions of visitors each year at Kaminarimon, or Thunder Gate, the grand entrance to Senso-ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo.
The gate stands 11.7m tall and carries the massive vermilion lantern that has become one of Japan’s most photographed landmarks. Flanking the lantern are Shinto deities turned protectors of Buddhism: Fujin on the east side and Raijin on the west.
The gate was destroyed and the sculptures severely damaged in an 1865 fire but the heads were saved and the statues were restored along with the gate in 1960.
The present-day statue of Fujin shows him in the familiar form: muscular and wild-haired, with a wind bag across his shoulders.
Japanese Wind Names: Before Arashi Meant a Boy Band
The winds that sweep over the Japanese archipelago have been named with a poet’s ear and a meteorologist’s caution. The names run into the hundreds, with most incorporating the Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese character feng - fu or pu - or the native Japanese term, kaze.
Many of the names are tied to a specific place and season.
In spring, the winds speak of flowers. There is bai fu - ume wind - which carries the fragrance of plum blossoms, hana no shita kaze - the wind under flowers - which passes under trees in full bloom, and hana fubuki - flower blizzard - the wind that scatters sakura.
East is the direction of spring, with the east wind - kochi or gochi - blowing when camellias bloom.
Spring also has its gales. Shika no tsuno otoshi is strong enough to break off the horns of deer while iwa okoshi has the power to lift rocks.
But even the rough winds of spring - haru - have music in their names: haru hayate, haru kita, haru arashi, shunko.
Haru ichiban - Spring No.1 - gets all the media attention. Said to have been named by fishermen, the arrival of the first strong southerly wind in spring is announced on news channels as a sign of the transition from winter and a warning of inclement weather.
The Hokkaido version is nicknamed bafun kaze - horse dung wind - a leftover from the days when horse carriages and sleighs crossed Sapporo city every day, leaving dung that falling snow buried.
When the snow melted, the crusty dung reappeared and announced its presence citywide because the fragrance of flowers isn't the only scent carried by spring winds.
The summer wind is green - ao kaze, ao arashi - because this is the season of new green leaves and rice plants growing so thickly that the water in the paddies cannot be seen.
The direction is south. Most Japanese know only a few wind names but minami kaze - the south wind - is likely to be one of them.
This is also the season of heat. Empu - flame wind - and embyou - flame gale - bring little relief when they blow in, but shippu - damp wind - is little better in the humid days of summer.
Early autumn is the season of storms. When imo arashi - taro gale - rips in, it's time to strip the leaves off taro plants to stop the wind from uprooting them.
The typhoon-like winds that storm in around the three most dangerous wind days are sometimes called nowaki - field cleaver. This ancient term for typhoon originates in the way the wind seems to split fields in two when it streaks through the grass.
The wind that dances with the leaves and sends them flying is shusei - autumn voice - while the one that tears them is reppyo fu - leaf ripper.
Wild geese arrive on kari watashi, a cold wind from the north. This is also a time of melancholy as leaves fall and the end of the year approaches; many autumn winds are considered hifu - sorrowful wind.
Kogarashi - tree witherer - blows from autumn into winter, the season of freezing winds from the north.
Oroshi - winds tumbling down and out of the mountains - are common now. Many oroshi - such as Fuji oroshi and Ibuki oroshi - bear the names of mountains; the kanji itself (颪) means 'wind descending'.
Blowing Into Town
To urban dwellers, the wind may seem like a far-off creature, a kami of the sea and mountains. But the wind has always been light on its feet and travels to us swifter than a Bactrian camel on the Silk Road.
It has followed us to our high-rise cities and found new ways to move, flowing down concrete mountains and valleys as biru kaze - building wind.
When you walk through the streets and into a wind that seems to blow from the direction of your home, ie kaze - house wind - has come to meet you.
At home and with the door closed, the air may seem motionless. But when you cool yourself with a paper fan, ougi no kaze - fan wind - has stirred to life.
If you spin or dance, you acquire a god's powers and release sode no ha kaze - sleeve wind.
You can untie Fujin's bag of winds even when you're still. Open a window and, with the breeze that is your breath and the currents that are your thoughts, call.
Because you have spoken to it in its own words, the wind will answer.
By Janice Tay