Rikan-cha

This is a color that Arashi Kichisaburo II liked to use for stage costumes and the like. Rikan was Arashi Kichisaburo's haigo (pen name). The two major fashionable colors of the Edo period were browns and grays, and they were loved by the common people so much that people spoke of "shijuhatcha hyakunezumi" (forty-eight browns and a hundred grays). The numbers have nothing to do with the actual count; they mean that that many colors were popular. Seji Kenbunroku (Record of Worldly Matters Seen and Heard), an essay on customs published in the 13th year of the Bunsei era, contains the following passage: "Theater today does not imitate the world; instead, the world has come to imitate the theater." It appears that the common people enjoyed the colors that actors favored.