The Double of Wind

"Bunshin in its most basic sense would translate as “double; alter ego; other self; Doppelgänger” etc., but it also carries Buddhist connotations, namely a reference to the temporary body a Bodhisattva would take upon appearing in the real world. One example would be the thirty-three manifestations of Kannon. The Trikaya Doctrine also states that Buddha has three bodies - one of which “manifests in time and space” (Water in Time and Space, anybody?), one of which is “a body of bliss or clear light manifestation”, and one of which “embodies the very principle of enlightenment and knows no limits or boundaries”."

People who heard a demo of the song told Hirasawa it sounded like there was something missing from it, even though there wasn't actually, so he had to write and add another audio track to make it sound right. Hirasawa could not replicate the feel the chorus had on the demo when making the final version, which gave him a hard time.

Lyrics

 * 1 "Hare can be translated as a noun or as the infinitive form of the verb hareru (晴れる). Some of the other verbs in this song (such as 越える, koeru and 立つ, tatsu) appear in their infinitive forms (koe; tachi), so I decided to translate hare this way as well. (The infinitive form of verbs can replace the -te form of verbs in written or formal Japanese.)  Read as a noun, this line would translate to something like, “Fair weather  Fair weather  [You] stand out”."
 * 2 "Upon reading this for the first time, I remembered having once seen the song “Let It Snow” translated into Japanese as “雪よ降れ, Yuki yo Fure”, which led me to translate this line in a similar way."

Connections

 * The wider theme of a calling from a larger elemental force breaking through a banal society to impart a revelation into the listener is also present in "Grandfatherly Wind", "Switched-on Lotus" and "Phonon Belt".