Why Is It Called "Rikyū Gray"?
Japanese Colors, by Origin
A gray named after a tea master who had no real connection to it. A scarlet once rumored to be dyed with a mythical beast's blood.
Sorted by what their names actually come from, twelve Japanese colors fall into four clear groups.
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Four Things a Color Name Can Come From
Japan has hundreds of traditional color names, and lists of them are easy to find. Sorting twelve of the most storied ones by where the name actually came from turns up four recurring sources: a specific person, a place, a plant or animal, and the dyeing method itself. Grouped this way, it's easier to see how differently — and sometimes how loosely — these names were assigned.
Named After a Person
01
Kenpō-iro
A smoky, near-black brown. Named after Yoshioka Kenpō, a swordsman who served as a fencing instructor to the Ashikaga shogunate. When the shogunate fell, his family gave up the sword and became dyers instead — making this one of the earliest Japanese color names taken directly from a real person.
02
Danjūrō-cha
A warm, muted persimmon-brown. Named after the kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō V, who wore a robe of this color in the play "Shibaraku." The color trended across Edo on the back of his fame, and the Ichikawa family still wears it during formal name-succession performances today.
03
Soga-iro
A muted, dusty yellow. Named after Jōwa (also read Sōga), the era name during the reign of Emperor Ninmyō, who was famously fond of yellow chrysanthemums. It's a rare case of a personal favorite color becoming permanently tied to a specific era in the historical record.
04
Rikyū-nezumi
A subdued, greenish gray. Named in the Edo period after the tea master Sen no Rikyū — even though there's no direct historical link between him and the color. People simply decided a restrained, elegant shade like this one "felt like something Rikyū would have liked," and the name stuck anyway.
Named After a Place
05
Edo-murasaki
A cool, blue-leaning purple, best known as the headband color of Sukeroku, the swaggering hero of a famous kabuki play. It was defined in contrast to the redder "Kyoto purple" — dyed in Edo instead of the old capital, it became a color point of pride for Edo's working class.
06
Bengara-iro
A deep, earthy red-brown made from iron oxide pigment. The name comes directly from Bengal, the region of India it was imported from during the Edo period. Fade-resistant and heat-tolerant, it became a favorite paint for building walls and roof tiles across Japan.
07
Fukagawa-nezumi
A cool, bluish gray named after Fukagawa, a lively Edo-period entertainment district. Under sumptuary laws that restricted commoners to browns and grays, Fukagawa's geisha and young men favored understated shades like this one — part of a huge palette nicknamed "forty-eight browns, a hundred grays."
Named After a Plant or Animal
08
Shōjō-hi
A blazing, saturated scarlet. Sengoku-era warlords had battle cloaks made from scarlet wool imported through Portuguese trade. The color was so intensely vivid that people joked it must be dyed with the blood of the shōjō, a red-furred, sake-loving beast from Chinese legend — and the nickname became its official name.
09
Kuchinashi-iro
A warm, reddish yellow dyed from gardenia fruit. Its name is a pun: the gardenia is called "kuchinashi" in Japanese, which also means "mouthless," because the fruit never splits open even when ripe. Heian-era poets loved the wordplay, using it as a symbol for a love kept unspoken.
10
Toki-iro
A soft, purplish pink named after the flight feathers on the underside of the crested ibis's wings. It's old enough to appear in the Nihon Shoki, Japan's earliest official chronicle, and was such a common sight in the Edo period — when the bird was still widespread — that everyone recognized the shade on sight.
Source: Nihon Shoki (720 CE)
Named After the Dyeing Method
11
Kame-nozoki — "Peeked Into the Jar"
The palest shade of indigo, barely more than off-white. The name literally means "peeked into the jar" — cloth dipped so briefly into the indigo vat that it looks like it only glanced inside. It's one of many subtle indigo shades Edo commoners invented within the limited color palette their era allowed them.
12
Ikkon-zome — "One-Kin Dye"
A very pale pink. Its name literally records the dye recipe: one "kin" (about 600 grams) of safflower petals used to dye a full bolt of silk. Deep crimson was expensive and legally reserved for nobility, but this diluted shade was pale enough that ordinary people were permitted to wear it.
The Loosest Link Is the Most Famous
The four groups aren't equally reliable. Names tied to a place or a dyeing method describe something verifiable. Names tied to a person are sometimes solid (Kenpō-iro, Danjūrō-cha) and sometimes pure vibes, like Rikyū-nezumi — a color linked to a tea master by nothing more than a feeling that he'd have approved of it. That looseness didn't stop it from becoming one of the best-known names on this list.
💡 Edo-period commoners, legally barred from bright dyes, invented so many shades of brown and gray that the palette earned its own nickname: "forty-eight browns, a hundred grays" (shijūhattcha hyakunezumi).