Color and Culture Quiz: 5 Questions on Kabuki Curtains, Japan's "Blue" Traffic Lights, Dutch Orange, the Hinomaru, and Tyrian Purple
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The names we give colors, and the ways we use them, were settled alongside the history of the places they come from. Here are five questions that trace the origins of colors through legal statutes, theater curtains, and the names of royal houses.
Q1. The jōshiki-maku, the curtain drawn across a kabuki stage before the performance begins and again at the end, is made of three vertical stripes. Which three colors?
- A. Black, persimmon (kaki), and moegi green
- B. Black, crimson, and white
- C. Indigo, persimmon (kaki), and white
- D. Black, purple, and gold
Show answer
Correct answer: A (black, persimmon, and moegi green)
Kaki-iro is a reddish brown (■ around #A45A2A), and moegi-iro is a deep blue-green (■ around #006E54). All three colors could be dyed from plants and minerals, which put them within reach of the dyestuffs an Edo-period playhouse could obtain.
The order of the stripes is fixed by theater. At the National Theatre the order from the left is black, moegi green, persimmon; at the Kabukiza it is black, persimmon, moegi green. The sequence tells you which theater you are looking at.
Q2. The "go" signal on a Japanese traffic light looks green. What color does the law itself call this light?
- A. A green light
- B. A blue light
- C. A blue-green light
- D. The law does not specify a color
Show answer
Correct answer: B (a blue light)
The table in Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Order for Enforcement of the Road Traffic Act lists the signal type as "blue light" (aoiro no tōka). The same table lists "yellow light," "red light," and "blue arrow light" alongside it. The Japanese word ao has long covered part of the green range, a usage that survives in aoba (green foliage), aona (leafy greens), ao-ringo (green apple), and aomushi (green caterpillar). "Blue light" for a Japanese traffic signal is not colloquial shorthand — it is the wording of the statute.
Among Japanese color words, only four can take the adjective ending -i directly: akai (red), aoi (blue), shiroi (white), and kuroi (black). These four are the words that have served as color names since the earliest period of the language. Green, purple, brown, and the rest require the linking form -iro no, as in midori-iro no ("of green color").
Q3. The Dutch national football team is known for its orange kit. The national flag is red, white, and blue, with no orange in it. Why is orange the country's color?
- A. It honors locally grown oranges
- B. The royal house is named Oranje (Orange)
- C. It comes from the color of the soil in reclaimed polders
- D. It was the cheapest dye available during the war of independence
Show answer
Correct answer: B (the royal house is named Oranje)
The Dutch royal house is Oranje-Nassau. "Oranje" comes from Orange, a territory in the south of France. Orange was a principality held by the House of Chalon from 1163, and in 1544 Willem van Nassau (1533–1584) inherited it, becoming known thereafter as William of Orange.
The sequence runs place name first, then house name, then color. Because the house name sounded like the fruit and the color, orange became the color that represents the country.
Q4. The Act on the National Flag and National Anthem was enacted in 1999. How far does it go in specifying the color of the nisshō, the sun disc at the center of the Hinomaru?
- A. It specifies only the color name "crimson"
- B. It specifies a Munsell value
- C. It specifies CMYK values
- D. It contains no provision on color
Show answer
Correct answer: A (it specifies only the color name "crimson")
Appended Table 1 of the Act gives the coloring as "Field: white" and "Sun disc: crimson" (beni-iro). The specification stops at the color name; no numerical values are given.
The dimensions, by contrast, are numerical. The height is two-thirds of the width, the diameter of the sun disc is three-fifths of the height, and the center of the disc sits at the center of the flag. Shape is defined in numbers, color in words.
The supplementary provisions of the Act include a "special rule for the form of the national flag." For the time being, the height may be set at seven-tenths of the width, and the center of the sun disc may be shifted toward the hoist side by one-hundredth of the width from the center of the flag. The special rule covers dimensions and placement only; the color remains "crimson" as given in Appended Table 1.
A specification that gives only a color name leaves latitude to whoever reproduces the color. The same "crimson" will look different dyed into cloth, printed on paper, or displayed on a screen. When you handle the flag in print or on the web, you need to check the specification supplied by the client or the medium, not the statute, because the statute has no numbers to work from.
Q5. In the ancient Mediterranean world, Tyrian purple was worn only by rulers and high-ranking clergy. What was the dye made from?
- A. The root of a plant growing along the Mediterranean coast
- B. Secretions from a marine sea snail
- C. A mineral found in volcanic ash
- D. Scale insects living on trees
Show answer
Correct answer: B (secretions from a marine sea snail)
The dye comes from secretions produced by the hypobranchial gland of sea snails in the family Muricidae. In Book 9 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder of Rome recorded the species of snail, how to extract the gland containing the secretion, and the process for dyeing wool.
What the secretion contains is a colorless precursor. Exposure to light and oxygen converts it into the purple pigment 6,6′-dibromoindigo. The color of the dye is not something visible inside the snail.
Option D, scale insects, is the source of a red dye (cochineal / carmine).
This panel shows one example of the Tyrian purple hue (around #66023C): a deep purple with a reddish cast. Pliny recorded that a single snail yields only a very small quantity of the secretion. Each snail had to be opened individually and its gland removed, and that labor is what limited who could wear the color.
References and sources
- Order for Enforcement of the Road Traffic Act (Cabinet Order No. 270 of 1960), Article 2, Paragraph 1 — e-Gov Law Search
- Act on the National Flag and National Anthem (Act No. 127 of 1999), Appended Table 1 and Supplementary Provisions — e-Gov Law Search
- Japan Arts Council, Cultural Digital Library, "Kabuki Encyclopedia: Jōshiki-maku" — Page
- Het Koninklijk Huis (official website of the Dutch Royal House), "Oranje-Nassau" — Page
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book 9, Chaps. 60–62 (trans. John Bostock & H. T. Riley) — Perseus Digital Library
- Cooksey, C. J. (2001) "Tyrian Purple: 6,6′-Dibromoindigo and Related Compounds," Molecules 6(9), 736–769 — MDPI
