吹くからに

秋の草木の

しをるれば

むべ山風を

あらしといふらむ 

ふんやのやすひで

ふくからに

あきのくさきの

しをるれば

むべやまかぜを

あらしというらん

Funya no Yasuhide

Blowing in search of

autumn plants and flowers

breaking all of them,

this wild mountain storm

is truely called the ‘batterer’.

Funya no Yasuhide, or Fumiya or Bunya no Yasuhide. Not much is known about him, but that he must have been a contemporary of Narihira and Sosei. As a poet he is one of the Rokkasen (Six Great Poets) and the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets.

作者略伝と語釈

On this drawing for a woodcut Hokusai shows the storm battering the banners at the Gion Festival, Gion Matsuri, in Kyoto, then celebrated in mid September, the wind chasing up prints and scrolls, and sweeping up the clothes of men and women, leaving them gaping up.

There is a play with the written text in this poem. Japanese is usually written from top to bottom, so, having 山 (mountain) on top of 風 (wind) gives you 嵐 (arashi, storm), repeated in the next line.

Hokusai