Colours in Spain and Japan

The flag is red and yellow, the rojigualda. The colours were chosen for the navy in 1785 because they stood out at sea, and the men's football team is called La Roja.

In the last part of a bullfight the matador uses a small red cape, the muleta. Bulls do not see red as we do. It is the movement that draws them, and the colour hides the blood.

At the San Fermin festival in Pamplona each July, runners and crowds dress in white with a red neckerchief and red sash.

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.

Green has a bawdy sense in Spanish. A chiste verde is a dirty joke, and a viejo verde is a lecherous old man.

The Falange, the fascist party of the Franco years, wore blue shirts, and its song Cara al Sol speaks of the new shirt. Today blue is the colour of the conservative People's Party.

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.

In Holy Week, members of religious brotherhoods walk in procession in robes and pointed hoods, many of them purple, the colour of penance. A purple band also marked the flag of the Second Republic.

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.

Under Philip II in the sixteenth century, plain black became the dress of the Spanish court and was copied across Europe. The deep black dye came from logwood shipped from the Americas.

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.