Colours in Iran and Japan

On the last Tuesday night before Nowruz, people jump over small bonfires and chant a line that gives their yellow, meaning sickness, to the fire and takes its red, meaning health.

On Yalda, the longest night of the year, families sit up late eating pomegranates and watermelon. The red fruit stands for the glow of dawn and of life.

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 green, white and red. The green is linked with Islam, and the phrase Allahu Akbar is written in white along the edges of the green and red bands.

In the disputed 2009 election, supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi wore green wristbands and scarves. The protests that followed are known as the Green Movement.

For Nowruz, the new year at the spring equinox, families grow a dish of green sprouts called sabzeh for the haft-sin table. It stands for rebirth.

Turquoise, firuzeh in Persian, has been mined near Nishapur for thousands of years. It is worn against the evil eye, and its colour covers the domes of mosques in Isfahan.

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.

In Muharram, Shia Muslims wear black for Imam Husayn. Among clerics, a black turban marks a sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet, and others wear white.

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.