Youka Nitta - blond-haired folk in Japanese manga

Youka Nitta

blond-haired folk in Japanese manga

19th-Sep-2008 10:59 pm

Very long, very fascinating article by Margaret O'Connell:
http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/may04/cv_0504_2.shtml

While it doesn't specifically mention Harudaki, it does shed light on something that had been confusing me: why Katou sometimes appears in the color covers/panels with brown hair instead of blond. Apparently the Japanese really perceive colors differently. To quote:

If, to the Japanese, the distinction that Westerners see between pale brown and yellow hair effectively does not exist, then it is literally possible for a manga character to have what we would call brown hair, but still qualify as a blond by Japanese standards.

It also discusses how blond characters = trouble. Heh.

Tangential note: the article has an extensive discussion on the hair colors of the characters in FAKE (which is how I stumbled across it in the first place), and it explains why Diana looks to me like a brunette in the b/w manga but is described as a blonde, and vice versa for Ryo (which has been driving me mildly insane ever since I picked up the series). (It has to do with lines indicating shininess of hair rather than color. I clearly have a lot more to learn when it comes to understanding the visual vocabulary of these things.)

P.S. I was thinking of writing a Bikky-meets-Katou drabble for this week's theme. Who knows...

Tags: author: bronze_ribbons, type: japanese culture/lit/hist
Mood:dorky

Comments

20th-Sep-2008 01:37 am

red_day_dawning

Fascinating article - thanks for sharing. The way different cultures perceive various colours is interesting - particularly in the cultural context of manga.

As for the blue/green traffic lights, according to Rebecca McGregor, "Ms. Kurosawa says she sees the traffic light color and it is green, but when she talks about it, she says it is blue ... She cannot say 'green light', or no one will understand. Though the color is green to [the Japanese], they say it is blue." While in japan, my brother wrote telling me the traffic lights appeared blue to him! Not blue-green, but blue.

20th-Sep-2008 02:29 am

snapelike

Interesting article. The hair-colour thing has been WFT-ing me as well, so thanks for linking.

I must add that colour names and perception might not be limited to Japan vs the rest of the world.

"...to the Japanese, a number of things which Westerners tend to regard as yellow are instead perceived as red, most notably the sun (at any time of day, not just sunset, which even Westerners sometimes describe in terms such as "blazing red")."

Here, in Denmark, the sun is most definitely red (or at times golden) but never yellow. Same goes with fire. No one would call fire yellow here. I'll say, though, that due to our northern position and the long summer nights, we have hours a day where the sun actually appears red.

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