Although they do have a perfect, obscure kanji for it.

The Internet has shown us that sometimes we don’t all agree on colors. Whether it’s strawberries that look red but really aren’t, or a certain dress whose color no one can agree on, our eyes and brains can get confused pretty easily.

And now Japanese Twitter is having another color disagreement, but this time it’s not about what color everyone sees, but what they call it. Twitter user @Hyouhonbako posted this and immediately got hundreds of replies:

▼ “This color has agonized me forever.
There are some who call it ‘green’ and some who call it ‘blue.'”

https://twitter.com/Hyouhonbako/status/914117088901398529

What? That’s easy. It’s obviously… well, now that I take another look at it, I suppose it does kind of look a little…. Nah, it’s got to be the other color. Yeah, definitely… although, it does have a bit of a hue of the other one to it….

Japanese Twitter was just as torn. Here’s some replies from confused netizens:

▼ Some were quick to call it “emerald green,”
which is what these shimmering spots in the water are referred to as.

https://twitter.com/kyantakkun/status/914483025248870401

▼ Someone else thought it look like this obscure Japanese color: byakugun-iro.
Go ahead and break out that word for some bonus points in Japanese class.

▼ “There’s a ‘Super Saiyan Blue’ transformation on the recent Dragon Ball.
I thought it looked more green though, so seeing this thread makes me happy!”

▼ And others were just generally unhelpful.
The text translates to “it’s red.”

https://twitter.com/tkm_hibimoca/status/914614834460688384

Of course, the problem here is exacerbated by the fact that Japanese already has a linguistic quirk when it comes to green and blue. The same word (ao) is often used to describe both.

The blue sky? That’s ao. The green traffic light? Ao. The blue ocean? That’s ao too. Green leaves? Definitely ao.

The few times that the two are differentiated is when it comes to nature. Forests and the like are usually considered to be midori (“green”). You can see how this discrepancy can be confusing with this tweet made in reply to the original one:

▼ “Whenever my friend tells me to buy the ao-colored trash bags,
I always buy the midori-colored ones too just in case, haha.”

https://twitter.com/minaminosora09/status/914473086757388288

Also, while some of us may just say the color is “turquoise” and call it a day, that’s not a color word used often in Japanese. A few posters mentioned it as a possibility, but they were in the vast minority. Here’s a post to give some insight into that “cultural color” difference:

▼ “This is turquoise. I’ve heard that in the West,
turquoise is a basic color, which is different from Japanese culture.”

But still, confusing colors and linguistic lamentations aside, that didn’t stop some netizens from attempting to use science to figure out if the color was closer to “blue” or “green.”

▼ The original poster used an app to try and analyze it, and even though more
“greens” than “blues” came up, it’s pretty clear the app doesn’t know what to call it.

https://twitter.com/Hyouhonbako/status/914121941060956160

▼ “It’s closer to green!!”
Hmm, I guess, but it looks pretty halfway between both to me.

▼ Or when science fails, just take a vote and go with that!
(Top: midori/green, middle: ao/blue, bottom: other)

In the end it seems like the majority felt better off calling it midori (“green”), but there was one reply that I think is by far the best of them all:

▼ “Just call it 碧 instead.
That kanji can be read as either ao or midori.”

We’ve seen before that a single kanji can be read many different ways, and while usually that’s annoying to memorize, here it works perfectly. If you see the color as more blue, great, read the kanji as ao. If you see it as more green, great, read it as midori. Same color, same kanji, different readings. Thank you, incredibly obscure kanji.

▼ After you impress your Japanese teacher by knowing byakugun-iro,
be sure to surprise them by using this kanji in a writing assignment too.

Now if we could just figure out how many shades of blue are on that piece of paper, all of our blue-colored worries would finally be over.

Source: Twitter/@Hyouhonbako via My Game News Flash
Images: ©SoraNews24