echo by Chloe Kong
Konnichiwa minna! (Eng: Hello everyone!) Welcome back to another Otaku Corner! The theme this time round is..about colours! Yes, a really pleasant topic to talk about. In this ‘issue’, I will be sharing with you some kanji about the various colours or iro (kanji: 色). So, let’s go!
The following are the list of colours in Japanese in a table form:
| English | Kanji | Romanji |
| Red | 赤 | aka |
| Orange | オレンジ | orenji |
| Yellow | 黄/黄色 | ki/ kiiro |
| Green | 緑 | midori |
| Blue | 青 | ao |
| Purple | 紫 | murasaki |
| Pink | ピンク/桃色 | pinku/ momoiro |
| Black | 黒 | kuro |
| White | 白 | shiro |
| Grey | 灰/ 灰色 | hai/ haiiro |
| Brown | 茶色 | chairo |
| Silver | 銀/白銀 | gin/haku gin |
| Gold | 金 | kin |
| Indigo | 藍 | ai |
In terms of Kanji, majority of the colours have a similar meaning as well as character to the words in Mandarin. Hence, for those who have studied Mandarin, you would find some of the words mentioned above familiar.
In some series, you would come across characters having a colour to represent him or herself. For example, the idol groups in Uta no Prince Sama have colour representation for each of the idols. In the picture below, the background is coloured to the colours that represent each character, such as Otoya’s red, Masato’s blue and so on. A way to determine the respective colours (for most of the characters) would be through either their hair colours or their eye colours or even both!
Credits to Broccoli
Besides Uta no Prince Sama, another famous series that has a similar concept would be Kuroko no Basuke! In the series, the basketball aces in the Seiko Middle School all have names that contained the kanji for each of their respective colours. For example, Akashi’s aka (kanji: 赤司) means red, Kuroko’s kuro (Kanji: 黒子) means black and so on. Just like in Uta no Prince Sama, each of the characters have also the hair colour that matches too! Although, this colour scheme can be found in many anime despite the characters not having matching colour hair or eyes.
Source: https://www.animexmusic.net/kuroko-no-basket-season-2.html
That wraps up another round of Otaku corner! Bai bai minna!
