松風 matsukaze Wind in the Pines

In 松風 matsukaze, 松 matsu is the pine and 風 kaze the wind. English has no single word for it: the wind in the pines names the wind, the soughing of the pines the sound. The Japanese reading keeps a pun, since matsu is also to wait, and the poets used it.

松風 is also a name: of a Noh play on two sisters of Suma, Matsukaze and Murasame, and of a chapter of The Tale of Genji. A piece for the koto, a confection and a blended incense carry it too.

In China, the Daoist recluse Tao Hongjing, by the History of the Southern Dynasties, loved above all the wind in the pines. He planted pines all through his courtyard, and whenever he heard their sound he was glad.

One tale in Ueda Akinari's book of tales Ugetsu monogatari, printed in 1776, turns on two Zen lines, among them the moon on the river shines, the wind in the pines blows. A priest, his mind thrown into disorder by a passion of love, has become a demon. A Zen master sets him on a stone, puts his own blue hood on his head, and gives him the two lines.

A poem printed under the Zen master Ikkyū's name likens the heart to the sound of the pine wind in an ink painting. That Ikkyū wrote it is the print's claim; a scholar writes of the book as one whose authorship is ascribed to him. A book of 1880 explains the poem: however skilled the painter, the sound of the pine wind is the one thing he cannot paint.

In later tellings the poem's upper line changes and the lower stays. In an appendix printed in 1905, it answers someone who asked the deepest secret of the way of tea. Books of 1905 and 1907 give a sword version to the swordsman Yamaoka Tesshū. In a story-book of 1886, the swordsman Yagyū Jūbei answers a poem the priest Takuan sent him with a version that opens with what words shall I liken winning?

A legend makes the poem the death verse of the priest Kōchi, who died in 1363 and whose body is kept at Saishōji in Echigo. An encyclopedia prefaced in 1712 already tells it. It is a legend, not a verse of 1363, and one Edo writer adds that whether it is true, he does not know.

The Ittō-ryū sword school's teaching of the pine wind has three explanations in print, and they do not say the same thing. A book of 1884 teaches to let the opponent's surging spirit spend itself, then strike when it slackens. A commentary printed in 1902 teaches to step out of the matched spirit, and its shorter print of 1903 says when there is wind in a pine, it rustles, and is always matched.

A sword manual of 1936 warns against being swallowed. The pine sounds as the wind blows it, loud in a strong wind and soft in a weak one. Ellis Amdur's English gives the commentary on stepping out of the matched spirit as Tesshū's. Our history finds it the school's: printed in 1902 as an Ono-ha text, and in 1903 among Tesshū's writings under the school's heading.

The dictionaries our history read give the word no sense from the sword. So the sword teaching, a teaching of the Ittō-ryū with three explanations in print, is one telling of the word among several, not its meaning. Our romaji is matsukaze, the headword in two of them. The same two give shōfū its own entry, as the Sino-Japanese word, and one undated sword-school manuscript gives the sword article's 松風 that reading.

Our history reads what the word alone carries, in Japanese, as the sound itself. It is the sound in the pine tops, in the kettle, and in the poem's painted pine. That sound, a book of 1880 explains, no painter can paint.

A Japanese word, まつかぜ, first in the Man'yōshū by the 日本国語大辞典; read しょうふう, the Chinese word of the Zen line 江月照松風吹 (rubied せうふう in 1776). The poem こゝろとはいかなるものをいふやらん / すみゑにかきしまつ風のをと (as the 1632 print spells it) is printed under Ikkyū's name in prints the National Diet Library dates to the 慶長 and the 慶長 or 元和 eras, and in 1632; 松風之事 is one of the 一刀流's twelve articles, and the earliest known print of a teaching the school calls 松風 is of 1884.