Winds of Gold—A Hundred Views of Saihoji Vol. 11

In this series of essays on Saihoji the renowned translator of Japanese poetry and poet Peter MacMillan records his impressions of and reflections on his visits to the garden throughout the four seasons. We hope that through these essays you the readers and fans of Saihoji can feel as if you are also present in the magical garden even when you cannot visit us.

Winds of Gold

Today I would like to look back to one of my visits to the garden at the end of November 2024. The garden was in its full color, yellows, reds and golds. Even the breezes themselves seemed to be golden, and it reminded me of one of my favorite zen phrases, tairo kinpu 体露金風. It comes from the Zen text The Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku). There was a famous Zen master called Unmon who lived in China around 1,000 years ago who was once asked the following question by a monk.

“In late fall, when the cold, wintry winds begin to blow and the leaves fall from the trees, how do you feel?”
“Tairo kinpu,” Unmon replied:

In season of mists,
experiencing fully
the winds of gold.

The monk was asking Unmon how he felt about all things in nature dying off as winter approaches and hinting about the advancing old age and decline of Unmon himself. But Unmon’s reply instead suggests the invigorating breezes and dazzling colors of autumn foliage.

I believe it shows a wonderful sense of self-acceptance, of living fully in the moment and realizing that if we live fully each moment that aging or youth or failing or succeeding are not important; there is only two things that are important, namely always being true to oneself and always living fully every moment. If we are true to ourselves and always present in ourselves then every age can be the age of golden winds.

Let’s look at the kanji characters. The first one is the character for the body of oneself, or just oneself, which is followed by the character for dew, —commonly associated with both the fragility of life and the season of autumn, —a perfect image of a man in the last quarter of his life. These two characters are followed by the characters for “gold” and “winds.”

At first, they seem very much in contrast and surprising because something gold suggests a peak of life and not advancing old age. But the way I interpret the phrase is that any age and every age can be our golden age, and indeed every age must be our golden age. We can achieve this by living fully each moment and always being true to ourselves.

I hope that when you walk around Saihoji that it will inspire you to begin your own journey embraced at every moment by beautiful golden winds, that both invigorate you and push you forward on your own unique path in life.

This saying influenced me so much and I came to see it as a reflection on the way I should live in the last quarter of my own life. Because of it, I decided to change the title of my column to Winds of Gold—A Hundred Views of Saihoji.

Peter MacMillan

Peter MacMillan is a prize-winning translator, scholar, poet, and President of The Moon is a Boat Co., Ltd.

His translation, One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each (Hyakunin Isshu), was published in 2008, winning prizes in both Japan and the United States. After that, he completed an English translation of The Tales of Ise (Ise Monogatari), which was published by Penguin in 2016. He has also published a collection of poetry entitled Admiring Fields.

Awards:
Recipient of the Donald Keene Center Special Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
Recipient of the 44th Special Cultural Translation Prize from the Japan Society of Translators Nominated for the PEN Award for Poetry Translation for the English translation of The Tale of Ise (Ise no Monogatari)