Red and White – Auspicious colors in Japan

–As you can tell from the Japanese flag, red and white are the traditional colors in Japan. They are used in auspicious events and they unconsciously tend to prefer these colors. The word “日本” in Kanji characters (which means Japan in English) means the rising sun and the red circle at the center of the national flag expresses the sun.  

The picture above is a curtain with red and white vertical stripes. This curtain is hung in auspicious and traditional events such as wedding, graduation ceremony and entrance ceremony.

Also, there is a national music show on TV broadcasted on new year’s eve called Kohaku-Utagassen (red & white year-end song festival). In this TV show, male (white team) and female (red team) contest by singing their songs. Red and white are also used in this show as a team color.

You will have a lot of opportunities to see these colors when you go to Japanese traditional events. Or if you see these colors, you can understand that it is something traditional and auspicious in Japan.