Colours in Turkey and Japan

The flag is red with a white crescent and star, and is called al bayrak, the red flag. It comes down from the late Ottoman flag.

Turkey red was a bright, fast red for cotton, made from madder root by a long process worked out around Edirne. European dyers spent much of the 1700s trying to copy it.

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.

Party colours are plain in Turkish elections: the governing AK Party uses orange with a light bulb, and the Republican People's Party uses red with six arrows.

Green is linked with Islam and with holy men. Tombs of saints are draped in green cloth, and the Green Mosque and Green Tomb in Bursa are named for their tiles.

The English word turquoise comes from the French for Turkish, because the stone reached Europe through Ottoman lands. Tiles from Iznik made the colour a mark of Ottoman mosques.

The nazar boncugu is a blue glass bead with a white and dark blue eye. It hangs on doors, cars and babies' clothes to turn away the evil eye.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul is known as the Blue Mosque. The name comes from the thousands of Iznik tiles and painted patterns, mostly blue, that cover the inside.

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.

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.