Colours in Italy and Japan

It is a custom to wear new red underwear on New Year's Eve for luck and love in the coming year. Shop windows fill with it in December.

Rosso corsa, racing red, was the colour given to Italian cars in early international motor racing. Ferrari kept it, and it is now the colour people expect of the brand.

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.

A crime novel or thriller is called a giallo, a yellow. The name comes from the yellow covers of a series of mysteries that Mondadori began publishing in 1929.

The flag is green, white and red. A common reading gives green to the plains and hills, white to the snow of the Alps and red to the blood of the wars of unification.

National sports teams play in blue and are called the Azzurri. Blue was the colour of the House of Savoy, which ruled Italy until 1946, and does not appear on the flag.

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.

The leader of the Giro d'Italia cycle race wears the maglia rosa, the pink jersey. It matches the pink paper of La Gazzetta dello Sport, which founded the race.

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.

The Blackshirts were the armed squads of Mussolini's Fascist movement. Black shirts were later copied by fascist groups in other countries.

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.