Japanese Blue and Green #25_ The Edo Period (Part 4)

Japanese Blue and Green #25

In the previous installment, I introduced the Dutch word blaauw, which arrived in Japan during the Edo period. While blaauw became well known as the word for the color of Prussian blue, a very different development was unfolding in the world of scholarship — before Prussian blue had yet transformed the color experience of artisans and commoners.

The blaauw of Newtonian Optics

"志筑忠雄" (Shizuki Tadao), a scholar of Dutch learning, introduced the separation of light by prism in "暦象新書" (Rekishō Shinsho: 1798–1800), in which the color names of the spectrum appear. This work is the earliest Japanese text to engage with Newtonian optics.

	Excerpt from Shizuki Tadao, Rekishō Shinsho (manuscript copy) @ Waseda University Library
Shizuki refers to the prism as "三斜鏡" (sansha-kyō) and writes: where light meets shadow, those parts adjacent to darkness with strong light become "赤" (Aka: red), followed by "黄" (Ki: yellow); those adjacent to darkness with faint light become "青" (Ao), followed by "緑" (Midori: green).

Newton's Opticks (1704) was originally written in English, classifying the spectrum as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. However, this knowledge did not reach Japanese scholars of Dutch learning directly from the English; it was transmitted through Dutch sources. As noted earlier, Dutch groen corresponds to English "green," and blaauw (modern spelling: blauw) — introduced in the context of Prussian blue — corresponds to English "blue." Indigo would have remained indigo in Dutch as well.

"ぐろうん" (Guroun: groen) appears in the entry for "みどり" (Midori) in the 1830 edition of the dictionary "倭訓栞" (Wakun no Shiori), while blaauw does not appear in the corresponding entry for "あを" (Ao).

In fact, the entry for "あを" (Ao) in "倭訓栞" (Wakun no Shiori) lists only plant-related examples:

• "桃花襲" (momohana-gasane): a layered garment color combination derived from plant hues
• "青梅" (ao-ume): unripe green plums
• "松葉紙" (matsuba-gami): paper the color of pine needles, i.e. green
• "青草" (ao-kusa): literally green grass
• "青草束" (ao-kusa-taba, from the Jindai-ki): same as above

Only plant-related examples appear — none pointing toward blue. And the gloss "i.e. green" attached to "松葉紙" is remarkable in itself.

Even as late as 1830, the general understanding of "青" (Ao) remained in this state. Yet around 1800, working from a source in which blaauw and indigo appeared, Shizuki Tadao rendered the green portion of the spectrum as "緑" (Midori) and the adjacent portion as "青" (Ao). Whether he had a concrete mental image of the specific hues of the spectrum cannot be confirmed, but given that the primary axis of "青" (Ao) had long been rooted in green, there must have been some reason why he introduced "青" as the equivalent of blaauw without any supplementary explanation.



"Rekishō Shinsho" is, I believe, the earliest text in which "青" (Ao) can be confirmed as carrying its modern interpretation — distinct and separate from "緑" (Midori). Having traced the story all the way from the age of the Kojiki, we have at last arrived at an "Ao" that stands alongside "Midori" as a parallel term.

I have searched widely, but every earlier text I have examined gives a slightly different impression of "青" (Ao). Those who worked with pigments would certainly have had occasion to translate Dutch, yet given the need to express subtle gradations of color, using "青" alone as a product name would have been inconceivable.

But what led Shizuki to conclude that "青" (Ao) was the appropriate equivalent?

The spectrum itself has no clear boundaries. Today, the number of colors recognized varies by country — Germany, for instance, recognizes five. In Japan, the seven-color scheme as presented by Newton is standard, with blue rendered as "青" (Ao) and indigo as "藍" (Ai). "藍" (Ai) is the Japanese word for the indigo plant, the traditional source of blue dye. For more on indigo dyeing, see here.

Are you familiar with this picture book?

This is "THE RAINBOW GOBLINS" (Japanese edition: "虹伝説"), a picture book by the Italian artist Ull de Rico, telling the story of goblins who eat a rainbow. Japanese fusion music has been enjoying a surge of popularity in recent years, particularly overseas, and it is well known that the guitarist Takanaka Masayoshi was so captivated by this beautiful book that he released a concept album titled "虹伝説 THE RAINBOW GOBLINS." Both the album and the picture book are truly wonderful works. In what we would today call a media mix, the picture book was released just before the album.

Looking at this illustration, the third band of light feels naturally like blue — "青" (Ao). Italy and Japan appear to share a close perception in this regard. The English-speaking world, however, is another matter: both the United States and the United Kingdom typically recognize six colors, with no distinction made between blue and indigo. Given that it was Newton himself who established the seven-color scheme, one might have hoped that England at least would have held to it.



Diagram of the solar light spectrum

Referring to this diagram, the spectrum moves from green to the right through blue, indigo, and violet. The blue range would encompass everything from light blue to blue proper — "水色" (Mizu-iro: light blue) and "空色" (Sora-iro: sky blue) can only be placed within the blue region. And with indigo occupying its own adjacent band, dark blue would fall within the indigo range. This means that the midpoint of the blue region may actually sit considerably closer to light blue than one might expect. The representative shade used to illustrate blue varies considerably depending on the source, but if the spectrum above is divided equally, the result would look something like the chart below.

That said, if presented this way, I suspect many people would identify the indigo band as "青" (Ao). In China, calling it "蓝" (lán) would pose no problem, but it differs considerably from Japan's traditional "藍" (Ai). 

Furthermore, it might have been better to represent the blue band with its most characteristic shade — "水色" (Mizu-iro: light blue) / "空色" (Sora-iro: sky blue). Taking these concerns into account and expressing it in terms of the modern Japanese color perception, the result would look something like the chart below.

Can you see how the position of "青" (Ao) has shifted? In practice, this kind of color arrangement is more common in depictions of the rainbow — though you will notice that the third band differs considerably from the picture book shown earlier. It is entirely natural for interpretations to differ, and a six-color scheme — with the explicit acknowledgment that the blue range is broad — would be far more intuitive.

Perhaps Newton's decision to name the third band blue was not the most fortunate choice. There may have been no better alternative available to him, but had he chosen a color name that more readily evokes a lighter, blue-sky tone in the minds of most people, it seems likely that the seven-color scheme would have taken hold in the United States and the United Kingdom as well.

Blue arrived in Japan in the form of blaauw, and it is highly likely that a small number of people connected to trade in Nagasaki were already familiar with blaauw before the era of Prussian blue and Newtonian optics. For instance, when receiving explanations of high-value trade goods such as natural ultramarine — made from lapis lazuli — they would surely have been told something to the effect of "in Dutch, this color is called blaauw."

lapis lazuli (Ruri)	Ultramarine

The impression is somewhat different from Newton's blue. Lapis lazuli has a distinctly violet quality to it, so if it were to be assigned to a band, indigo would seem the more fitting choice. It is possible that the Dutch blaauw and the English blue were not precisely aligned in their definitions to begin with — but given that color perception shifts across languages, across cultures, and across time, untangling this would be an extraordinarily difficult task.

Shizuki, for his part, must have encountered sequences such as groen — blaauw — indigo — violet in his Dutch sources. After looking into the matter, I imagine his initial line of thinking ran something like this:

• When I compare actual examples of blaauw and indigo, they look close to the colors of pure ai-dyeing. So from the techniques of ai-dyeing, I can make sense of the progression from dark navy through to yellow.
  
  Inside Shizuki's head.
  (Probably only the second and third from the left are "Ao.")
  
  
• Pure ai-dyed colors have been called "縹" (Hanada) since ancient times. For indigo, which lies closer to the dark end, I could probably assign "藍" (Ai) or "紺" (Kon). But for blaauw — a "Hanada" with fewer dyeing repetitions — there is no suitable color name. We simply do not have the habit of dividing the colors produced by ai-dyeing into two.
  
  
• And violet appears at the very end — but this I cannot understand.

In fact, Shizuki never provided translations for all seven colors. The structure of the spectrum as a phenomenon was, I believe, simply beyond what could be grasped within a framework that lacked the concept of wavelength.

What deserves attention here is that the very framing in the passage cited above — the contrast of strong and faint light — is likely Shizuki's own. What he could reliably grasp from the original was only the bare fact of the color sequence. So he tried to organize it using a sense he had at hand — that of "明暗顕漠" in which "明" (mei) itself denotes "赤" (Aka: red) and "漠" (baku) itself denotes "青" (Ao). He placed one end as "strong light adjacent to darkness = "赤" (Aka)," and the other as "faint (ambiguous) light adjacent to darkness = the colors of ai-dyeing."

Within this arrangement, having "赤" (Aka) on the bright side maps directly onto traditional sensibility. As for the "青" (Ao) side, the gradation produced by layered ai-dyeing — passing through "紺" (Kon), "留紺" (Tomekon), and "褐色" (Kachiiro) toward something close to black — was a tangible reality for him, so placing "the colors of ai-dyeing" on the side adjacent to darkness would have caused no friction.

The trouble is what comes between "the colors of ai-dyeing" and darkness: violet (紫). The translation violet = "紫" (Murasaki) itself must have been known to Shizuki, but its appearing at the far end of the spectrum was abrupt — beyond comprehension. Layered ai-dyeing does not yield violet. While "紺" (Kon) → "褐色" (Kachiiro) → black can be made sense of, "紺" (Kon) → "紫" (Murasaki) → black cannot be accounted for within traditional color sensibility. To this opacity of meaning was added another problem: the absence in Japanese of single color names that could distinguish indigo from blaauw. And so Shizuki settled for explaining only two pairs — "赤" (Aka) and "黄" (Ki: yellow), "緑" (Midori) and "青" (Ao) — leaving the rest aside. The unintelligible portion and the portion resistant to translation were shelved together, and the band from blaauw through violet was loosely subsumed under "青" (Ao).

Taking on a faintly sunken, ambiguous region in a single sweep was, after all, the very province of "漠" (baku) — so this can be called the true element of "青" (Ao), which itself emerged from "漠" (baku). Shizuki, then, was not the figure who first "translated blaauw as '青' (Ao). He simply received, under "青" (Ao), the range he could barely organize. Yet what matters above all is that in Japan, the separation of "青" (Ao) from "緑" (Midori) carried a weight that cannot be overstated. Hazy though it was, this can rightly be called a redefinition of "青" (Ao).

Summery

In the world of scholarship, the band of the spectrum adjacent to "緑" (Midori) came to be expressed as "青" (Ao) — by way of the Dutch blaauw. This is the first appearance, in this blog series as well, of a definition close to the modern understanding of "青" (Ao). The perception was likely a broad one — encompassing both blue and indigo under "青" — but the exclusion of the green range from "青" (Ao), and the complete parallel treatment of the two colors, was almost certainly a first in Japan. There must have been those who found this new framework genuinely useful.

Shizuki Tadao is also known as the originator of the word "鎖国" (sakoku: the policy of national isolation). In today's terms, it would surely have won a New Words and Buzzwords Award. Given this gift for coinage, I find it increasingly plausible that no one before him had ever interpreted "青" (Ao) as referring specifically to the blue range of the spectrum. In other words, the evidence strongly suggests that it was Shizuki Tadao who created the modern understanding of "青" (Ao).

It goes without saying, however, that this information would never have reached ordinary people. The new usage of "青" (Ao) would have been known only to a tiny fraction of the educated elite. The fact that the 1830 edition of "倭訓栞" (Wakun no Shiori) contains no trace of it makes clear that, at least by that point, it had not spread at all. Overturning the age-old understanding of "青" (Ao) as fundamentally rooted in green was no easy matter.



The next installment will be the final chapter of "Japanese Blue and Green." At last, the modern understanding spreads to the general population — and the story connects to the present day. Stay tuned!