Colours in Colombia and Japan

For a century and a half, politics was a contest between the red of the Liberals and the blue of the Conservatives. Their fighting peaked in the years called La Violencia.

The torii gates of Shinto shrines are often painted vermilion, a bright orange-red. The colour is held to keep evil away, and the long tunnels of gates at Fushimi Inari are the best known.

The flag is yellow, blue and red, with the yellow band twice as wide. Yellow is read as the gold and riches of the land, blue as the two oceans and red as the blood of independence.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez kept a yellow rose on his desk for luck, and yellow butterflies follow a lover in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Readers mourned him with yellow paper butterflies.

The mines of Muzo and Chivor produce emeralds prized for their deep green. The Muisca people traded them long before the Spanish arrived.

Blue is the colour of the Conservative Party, the old rival of the Liberals. Whole towns were once known as blue or red by the party they backed.

Indigo dyeing, called aizome, clothed ordinary people in deep blue through the Edo period. The men's national football team plays in blue and is nicknamed Samurai Blue.

Purple dye from the murasaki plant was costly and hard to make. In the court rank system set up under Prince Shotoku, the highest officials wore purple caps.

Pale pink is the colour of cherry blossom. In spring people picnic under the trees for hanami, flower viewing, and the short bloom is a common image for how brief life is.

A bride at a Shinto wedding may wear the shiromuku, a kimono that is white from head to foot. White is also the colour of the paper streamers that mark sacred places.

Red and white together, called kohaku, mark happy occasions. Curtains at ceremonies are striped red and white, and the New Year's Eve song contest sets a Red team against a White team.

Mourners wear plain black, called mofuku, to funerals, and men add a black tie. Condolence money goes in an envelope tied with black and white cord.

The Muisca made offerings of gold figures to the gods at Lake Guatavita. The ritual of a new ruler covered in gold dust gave rise to the legend of El Dorado.