Colours in Germany and Japan

Red is the colour of the Social Democrats. Coalitions are named by party colours: red, yellow and green make a "traffic light", and black, yellow and green a "Jamaica" coalition.

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.

Yellow is the colour of the liberal Free Democrats. To be "yellow with envy", gelb vor Neid, is the usual German phrase where English says green.

Green is the colour of Alliance 90/The Greens, one of the first environmental parties to enter a national parliament, in 1983.

The blue flower, die blaue Blume, comes from a novel by Novalis. It became the emblem of German Romanticism and stands for longing for what cannot be reached.

Prussian blue, one of the first modern synthetic pigments, was made by accident in Berlin in the early 1700s. It later coloured the coats of the Prussian army.

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.

Brown is the colour of Nazism in German political speech, after the brown shirts of the party's stormtroopers. To call a view "brown" is to call it far right.

The national football team plays in white shirts and black shorts, the colours of the old Prussian flag, not those of the national flag.

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.

Black is the colour of the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party. The usage goes back to the black robes of the Catholic clergy.

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 black, red and gold flag goes back to the democratic movement of the early 1800s and the 1848 revolutions. The colours are often traced to the uniforms of the Lutzow volunteers who fought Napoleon.