
The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what? - lelf
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/02/25/language/the-japanese-traffic-light-blues-stop-on-red-go-on-what/
======
jdshaffer
I've lived here in Japan for the past 18 years and I still tend to call them
"midori", much to my wife and children's amusement. But, the hue of the lights
are actually somewhere between the typical USA green lights and a blue. My
wife (and kids) swear that it actually is a BLUE-hue light whereas I still see
Green.

SAME issue with the sun. I say it's yellow, they say it's red, and it's not a
kanji issue...

$0.02.

~~~
maaark
The sun is white.

~~~
fenomas
Nonsense, it's white or yellow or red or otherwise, depending on the viewer
and time of day and weather and whatnot. But the topic here is how people
describe things, and in Japan the sun is commonly described as red.

~~~
runarb
maaark probably referred to that the sun actually is white, but may appears
with different colors if you see it through a filter (atmosphere):
[http://solar-
center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.htm...](http://solar-
center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.html)

~~~
fenomas
It's white by some definitions and not by others, there's no single objective
truth to the matter. But none of this has any relevance to the post originally
being replied to.

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userbinator
The same character is used in Chinese where it also refers to bluish-green,
tending closer to green than blue:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92)

There is also a character for a much deeper blue:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%97%8D](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%97%8D)

~~~
anthk
True, see the Pokémon case with the original Green edition and then the Blue
one.

~~~
rincebrain
In this case, no - Pokémon Red+Green were the two games released together in
Japan, and Blue was a special edition released later.

When it came out in the US, they based Red and Blue on the updated
code+artwork from Blue, but with the catchable Pokémon split that was there
between JP Red/Green (e.g. Electabuzz/Magmar were exclusive to JP Red/Green
and US Red/Blue, respectively). (This is also why on, say, Bulbapedia the
sprite lists for Gen 1 list "Red/Blue", "Yellow", and "Red/Green" as different
entries.)

(I _think_ it was just that they preferred the red/blue contrast? I'm not sure
I ever heard a definitive answer why, other than perhaps the fact that they
mashed up the Blue and Green version.)

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labster
If you're driving in Japan, you're likely to be eaten by a grue light. That
said, we actually mix some blue into modern green lights, so that colorblind
people can distinguish the two colors.

In official CalTrans terminology, the yellow lights are called "amber lights"
\-- so we have our own weirdness in the U.S.

~~~
brownbat
Amber, the color of traffic lights, waves of grain and... pretty much nothing
else.

Reminds me of (grammatical) petrels:

[https://www.kith.org/words/lists/petrels-
list/](https://www.kith.org/words/lists/petrels-list/)

It's as if when modifiers and nouns sense they are dying in a language, they
clutch on to one another for support, and eventually become like a single
unit.

~~~
teraflop
I think there's also a naturally-occurring substance that's amber-colored, but
I can't remember what it's called.

~~~
brownbat
I've never heard "amber" used as a _modifier_ for "amber."

"Quick, bring me the amber amber, Amber!"

I didn't write the comment very clearly, but the petrels were a hint I was
talking about language and usage, not simply objects in that part of the
spectrum.

Ale is a notable omission, but the candidates dwindle.

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i_made_a_booboo
It's not just the traffic lights in Japan, it's the traffic lights all around
the world, if you're a Japanese person. My wife and I always refer to it as
blue when speaking Japanese and we live in my home country. It's jus St a
cultural norm and the truth is not actually important to human beings, so it
doesn't surprise me.

They call grass 'blue' too. There's even a familiar expression with a Japanese
twist that goes "The grass is bluer on the other side".

Apparently "blue" used to be a pretty wide range of colors ranging from quite
very dark, almost black blues to normal blue and the kind of green that is
often referred to as blue. Japanese has a fairly large number of loan words
for colors indicating some colors were introduced to their lexicon through
contact with foreigners. Pink is an example of that. They have 'sakura-iro'
which represents the color of cherry blossoms but it's not a proper
representation of pink by itself as you wouldn't use it to refer to say a hot
pink.

The level of cognitive dissonance I have to endure every time we're stopped at
the lights still irks me.

~~~
fenomas
Yeah, when this was last on HN I looked into it and apparently 青 historically
meant any cool or pale color. The article mentions set phrases where it
referred to green, but there are others that don't - 青ざめる (to turn pale), 真っ青
(pallid), etc.

Interestingly, 青 historically applied to such a wide range of cool colors that
it survives in contradictory ways - e.g. 青毛 (blue+hair) refers to a black
horse, while 青馬 (blue+horse) usually means a white horse.

------
rangibaby
In short: Historically, blue and green were the same word. Green is now a
separate word, but some green things are called "blue" including green traffic
lights. Other "blue" things include apples and vegetables.

~~~
freddie_mercury
That doesn't seem to be what the article says at all:

> this was most likely due to the fact that red, blue and yellow (赤青黄) are
> regarded as the three primary colors in Japanese painting. Hence the “blue”
> traffic lights.

~~~
rincebrain
They're also regarded as the three primary colors in US painting - I recall
having it explained to me when very young with two color wheels as combining
paint versus combining light.

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kazinator
English to the rescue. Japanese has the word ブルー ("buruu", blue) from English.
That word only means blue, and not green. If you want to be specific that
something is blue, excluding green, just use "buruu".

~~~
fenomas
Outside of set phrases, 青 also only means blue.

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kijin
It also happens in Korean. The green light is 파란불, literally "blue light".
(Thankfully, traffic lights are actually green around here.) In modern usage,
파란 means "blue" most of the time, but its variant 푸른 continues to mean "grue".
The sky is grue, and so is the pasture.

I don't think Korean even has a native word for "green". The most common word
for "green" in modern usage is 녹색, which comes from the Chinese characters 綠色
and feels more like a technical term than a native Korean word when placed in
a sentence.

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jac_no_k
/me lives in the Tokyo area, ethnically Japanese but grew up in the USA.

I still call these "grue" lights "midori" (green), confusing people around me.

------
pja
If they use anything like the hue that's used in the UK, it's been pushed a
long way towards blue (IIRC the intention was to better accommodate people
with red/green color-blindness).

You only really see it as explicitly “green” because years of training
yourself to see it as green because that's what books depicted it as & that's
what everyone called it.

~~~
Sharlin
Yeah, it's more like bright cyan in Finland as well (and I think basically
everywhere I've been to). Speaking as someone who's red/green colorblind, it's
a very good thing.

------
nosefrog
Another interesting things about Japan's traffic lights: as far as I can tell,
they don't detect whether cars are waiting for the light. Last time I visited,
I was waiting for ages for the light to change along with other cars, and
light wouldn't change early even if there were no cars going through the
intersection.

~~~
ankka
That's just fair - pedestrians aren't detected either

~~~
labster
Pedestrians have a button to press to let the signal know they exist. Until we
invent car-hands, that seems equivalent enough.

~~~
rincebrain
In a number of those systems, the buttons are a placebo that are wired to
nothing. [1] [2]

[1] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/placebo-buttons-
elevat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/placebo-buttons-elevators-
crosswalks.html)

[2] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/nyregion/for-exercise-
in-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/nyregion/for-exercise-in-new-york-
futility-push-button.html)

------
timoth3y
I've been living in Japan for about 25 years and a lot of Westerners get
confused over this.

Concepts like "blue" and "green" are abstract. The word 青 covers a different
part of the spectrum than the word "blue".

People get hung up on "what's the Japanese word that means X", but often there
is no word that means X. There is no distinct concept for X in Japanese. And
this goes far beyond color names.

European languages largely share a common cultural heritage and concepts tend
to map between them relatively easily, but many cultures aren't like that.

The Japanese stoplight colors are just the tip of a very, very deep iceberg.

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tokyokawasemi
Take a picture of a traffic light, color-picker out the green and print it
solid on a large sheet. Ask Japanese friends what color it is, they'll all say
green.

(Disclaimer: I once did this. Also, I might need some hobbies)

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jaclaz
OT, but not much, if you google for "petrol blue" you will find a lot of
colours that many people would call "green" and if you look for "petrol green"
you will find a lot of colours that many people would call "blue".

We used to have a car of the exact shade of green (or blue) that people called
alternatively green or blue, often only because of different lighting.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petrol_blue](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petrol_blue)

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JoeAltmaier
Many languages don't distinguish between blue and green. Other western colors
are also up for grabs: orange is named after the fruit, and didn't used to
exist either.

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malydok
Apropos traffic lights, as a European driving in Japan I was amazed at the
ability to go straight on a red light (with a green straight arrow).

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number6
I read somewhere that the original green light was blue but green was easier
to see at dawn or at dusk or at you or something so they switched

~~~
wodenokoto
The number of myths surrounding this phenomenon are quite numourous.

* The character for blue is simpler than the character for green, so it's easier for young school children to read safety text, if we call it blue (heard this from several people)

* "It IS blue" (not uncommon either)

* It used to be blue (apparently contradictred by TFA)

~~~
jhanschoo
I read somewhere (and a Google search brings up many articles that supports
this) that among societies and languages that makes fewer distinctions between
colors than the global educated society, blue and green are among the most
frequent to remain undistinguished.

~~~
Double_a_92
My dad also doesn't really distinguish between blue and green. It's mostly
green to him. And he grew up in Italy...

~~~
watwut
He might just be slightly colorblind. Partial colorblindness is quite common.

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mademechuckle
"backwards parking" :)

