question about japanese art and colors
 

hello ^^

can anyone tell me please what colors are "forbidden" in Japanese art/culture ??
I mean like white that symbolize death ( I've heard today that purple got the same effect...but I thought it's only in Thailand).
so what are the colors that you don't see naturally in Japanese art??

Only those without proper and valid visa :D

Yeah, forbidden is not a good word here, not even in quotes!

What do colors symbolize in Japanese culture/art? - that would be a better question.

Certain colours may infer some meaning, but there's no real 'banned' colours. You can give someone a white item as a gift and they're not going to freak out. Even if 'white' is traditionally associated with death in asia, most people wear black or muted to funerals nowadays anyway. There are some styles where the colours used are fairly particular; especially with kimono where colour combinations have names and seasons and meanings etc, but that's fairly specialist knowledge; the average man on the street isn't going to know it by heart.

Ukiyoe also traditionally uses fairly limited colours per painting as they were designed to be mass produced. The Great Wave painting consists of barely 5 tones.

wedding kimono are white - a symbol of your dying single life, eureka! :D

thank you for your answer :)

Well I know that there is certainly a difference in the meanings of colors compared to America (which I suppose would be extremely related to Europe).

I'm quite interested in this myself to be honest.

I know that in Tea Ceremonies guys will usually have a "cool" handkerchief (like purple or green) and women will usually have a "warm" colored one (orange or red). I don't know the meaning of this though.

I wonder how much of the color stuff was imported through China and how much was imported from the west as far as Japan is concerned. I know that in China yellow was like the best color (according to my fashion class that I took to graduate college :o ).

I think it's interesting to look at how cultures as well as humans (physiologically/physcologically) perceive colors.

I think this is something that marketers are extremely interested in, that's for sure! You might check out some marketing in Japan information if you can find it.

looking at tokyo's fashion disaster i realy doubt that nowadays any colors are not being in use, together separately or in any other nightmare-ish way...

these are so colourful-- I love them.

variety is the spice of life.

Though at times it can be an ingredient of kitsch.

I looked through color-charts from Japan and realized that, they differentiate so many of them, it's a bit scary.
They have more names given to only the tones of red than we have for all of our colors :) , and surely they use(d) it for different purposes with different meanings - as their names suggest it.

....http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan#Red-Violet_Series....
The page has a short but interesting side-note too.

Purple isn't a mixture of cool and warm? I think indigo would be cold and red would be warm, but I'm not sure where is purple. - in my language purple is a warm color because it's closer to the red, that's why I'm asking...

As I know not every yellow but this certain golden one was attached to the royal family (to the emperor), and no one else could wear it. No wonder why that's the best.

I think he meant to make a nightmarish example. :)
But I love to see the how open-minded and optimist you are. :vsign:

Nightmarish-----------HA HA--------NO---Wish I was brave enough to wear those colours LOL--Now that would be ridiculous LOL.

experimenting is good.