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.[1]Oroshi is a strong local wind across the Kanto Plain on the Pacific Ocean side of central Honshu.[2] This term identifies a katabatic wind.[3]
Literary references
The Oroshi wind is mentioned in Japanese poetry, including a poem which is included in the Hyakunin Isshu.[4]
ukarikeru
hito wo hatsuse no
yama-oroshi yo
hageshikare to ha
inoranu mono wo
— Minamoto no Toshiyori[4]
Make that heartless
woman, O mountain storm
of Hatsuse Temple,
crueller still!" – this is not
what I prayed for, and yet ...
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.[5]
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.
Piteraq – cold katabatic wind which originates on the Greenlandic icecap and sweeps down the east coastPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
Williwaw – Sudden blast of wind descending from a mountainous coast to the sea
Notes
^Kishō Kenkyūjo. (1969). Papers in Meteorology and Geophysics, p. 126, p. 126, at Google Books, citing "Dissolution of Separation in the Turbulent Boundary Layer," Papers in Meteorology and Geophysics (気象研究所研究報告), Vol. 20, No. 2, 1969, pp. 111-174, 126.
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