Nippon Colors, is an app that contains a collection of traditional colors used in Japanese literature, textiles such a kimono and other Japanese crafts.
It is very interesting to discover, these worlds of arts, all of them, I should say, including written text, in an effort to understand how people saw the world, how every period got permeated by its events, how people resolved their quests.
I have been quite fascinated by Kanji. These ideograms are doors to the imagination. So I like to take simple things, like these kanji here, and try to start discovering what they hold for us.
"O" from Onando, which is a colour, as you can see, it is what Japanese call an "Honorific". Anything that is hold in high esteem, anything honourable needs an "O" at the beginning.
"O" is a referral for what is to come... That is our first kanji: O, and then there is "Nan" which is "to keep storage", and then there is "Do", which refers to a kind of walk in closet. The "noble storage room" is, in the end, the colour's name of a room that stores clothes and furnishings, most likely from a Shogun. But there are various theories about the origin of this colour's name. There is even a theory that:
It came from the colour of the clothes of the officials who entered and exited the storage room in Edo Castle.
The colour of the curtain hanging on the storage room
The colour of the indigo (dai zome) painted walls of the storage room, and the dim image inside by candle light. And this makes sense, as indigo is known for its anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-moth properties.
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