Color expressions in Japanese language

My daughter, since she was 3, started to learn about colors. Since she’s bilingual (preferring Japanese) she knows colors in both languages, but through her, I also learned a lot about colors in Japanese culture, and how colors reflect the culture.

For example, when I was studying Vietnamese years ago in college, our teacher taught us that blue and green use the same word: xanh (pronounced like English “sign” with a flat, high tone). Interestingly, this happens in Japanese too: a green stop-light is often called ao (青) which usually means “blue”. I was quite surprised by this because it’s clear that people perceive colors the same, but somehow divisions between colors sometimes differ depending on the culture and language.

For example, certain expressions in Japanese tend to be expressed as “blue” rather than “green”. Of course, Japanese language has a word for green, midori (緑), and it’s regularly used, but sometimes the word for blue is used where English speakers would say green.　　For example, green grass in English is called aogusa (青草), which means “Blue Grass”.

Also, some common colors exist in Japanese language that don’t exist in English. For example, my 4-year-old daughter knows the color mizuiro (水色) in Japanese which means “water color”, but really is just light blue or maybe sky blue. Another example my daughter knows is yamabukiiro (山吹色) which means bright golden yellow. The kanji here are interesting since it means something like “mountain blow [e.g. wind] color”. It’s similar to goldenrod in English, I think.

But it’s also interesting because certain idioms and expressions express the same concepts as English, but with different colors. For example, to say “pale” in Japanese (as in a dead body), you might say aojiori (青白い) which means “white-blue”. In English, we would say “white” instead.

A while back, I found these example idioms in my old JLPT2 grammar book (pre-JLPT revision):

• 赤の他人 (aka no tanin) – Refers to something whom there is no connection with at all, no relation.
• 青くなる (aokunaru) – Expresses strong unease, or shock.
• 白い目で見る (shiroi me de miru) – To look at someone coldly, or with blame.
• 黄色い声 (kiiroikoe) – The kind of voice a child or woman has when excited.
• 白紙に戻る (hakushi ni modoru) – To start over, or to return to “square one” as we say in English.
• 白黒を争う (shirokuro wo arasō) – When the right choice is made very clear (between two options).

This was not the entire list from the book, but I thought these were the interesting ones. I don’t think these are used often in daily conversation, but probably more in a literary, poetic sense.

Update: visitor “Amaterasu” pointed out that Japan has many, many traditional colors. Following his advice, I found this link on Wikipedia. Quite a few colors there.

P.S. A great website reviewing all the basic colors in Japanese, the same ones my daughter learns.