Colours in Netherlands and Japan

The flag is red, white and blue. Its first stripe was orange, as in the Prince's Flag of the revolt against Spain, and had become red by the mid 1600s.

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.

Orange is the colour of the royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau. On King's Day, 27 April, the whole country dresses in orange for street markets and parties.

National teams play in orange and are called Oranje. The craze that takes over streets and shops during big football tournaments has its own name, oranjegekte.

On the King's birthday and other royal days, an orange pennant is flown above the national flag.

Delft blue is tin-glazed pottery painted in blue on white. Potters in Delft began making it in the 1600s as a cheaper answer to Chinese porcelain.

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 cabinet that joins the red Labour Party with the blue liberals is called paars, purple. The first purple coalition governed from 1994.

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 Homomonument in Amsterdam is made of three triangles of pink granite. It turns the pink triangle, the Nazi camp badge for gay men, into a memorial.

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 wealthy citizens painted by Rembrandt and Frans Hals wear sober black with white collars. A good black was costly to dye, so it showed both wealth and Calvinist restraint.

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.