Colours in Greece and Japan

Eggs are dyed red on the Thursday before Easter to stand for the blood of Christ. After the midnight service families crack them against each other.

On 1 March children tie on a martis, a bracelet of twisted red and white thread. It is worn until the end of the month and is said to protect the skin from the spring sun.

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 is the colour of PASOK, the socialist party that led many governments after 1981. Its symbol is a green rising sun.

The flag is blue and white, with nine stripes and a white cross. The colours are usually read as the sea and sky and the white of the waves and clouds.

A blue glass eye, the mati, is worn on a chain or hung in homes and cars against the evil eye. Blue is held to be the colour that turns the harm back.

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.

A child born to a reigning Byzantine emperor was called porphyrogennetos, born in the purple. The birth took place in a palace room lined with purple stone.

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.

Close family wear black for at least forty days after a death, and often for a year. In villages many widows keep to black for the rest of their lives.

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.

Orthodox icons and church mosaics set their figures against a ground of gold. It stands for the light of heaven, not for any earthly place.