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CLARKE, J. 2017. Japan blues: ao, ai, midori, aizome, ao-ja-shin. In Harkness, R. (ed.) An unfinished compendium of materials. Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen [online], pages 85-88. Available from: https://knowingfromtheinside.org/files/unfinished.pdf Japan blues: ao, ai, midori, aizome, ao-ja-shin. CLARKE, J. 2017 This document was downloaded from https://openair.rgu.ac.uk IRON ORE JAPAN BLUES interchangeable. Ao is a good example; in Jan Peter Laurens Loovers Ao, Ai, Midori, Aizome, Ao-ja-shin Japan, ao is the colour of grass and leaves, Jen Clarke and traffic lights and the colour of the sky. … but folk in the housen, as the People of the It can be blue and green, or blue or green. It Hills call them, must be ruled by Cold Iron. These impressions of blue have come from can also be an-almost black, if it is a horse’s Folk in housen are born on the near side reflecting on visitors responses to my use of coat, or be used to imply something pale, of Cold Iron – there’s iron in every man’s the colour blue during a residency in Japan green, unripe, unready, unpalatable. The house, isn’t there? They handle Cold Iron that focussed on making and exhibiting 24 boundaries are not the same, but more than every day of their lives, and their fortune’s 24-hour cyanotype photograms. The exhibi- this, to think about blue in Japan, I also made or spoilt by Cold Iron in some shape or tion was arranged as an act of remembrance, think of green. the other an anniversary of the ‘triple disaster’ that devastated the region in March 2011. It took I spent more than six months living in Puck in Rudyard Kipling’s Rewards and place in a snow-covered Morioka, Japan, Sendai, the biggest city in the Tohoku Fairies (1910: 8) March 2015. region, which was perhaps the worst hit by the disaster. I lived in Aoba-ku, ‘the district The Iron Age, preceding the Stone Age and 1 Ao, Ai, Midori青,藍, 緑: an inventory of green-leaves’, just a short walk from Bronze Age, saw the appearance of iron the central avenue, Aoba-dori, which was in people’s lives as Puck illuminates. Tools, named, I supposed, after the ancient kiaki weaponry, machinery amongst other arte- (luscious-leaved, giant Japanese elm trees) facts were endowed with the grey coloured that line the street. Walking down the street substance. Iron, together with petroleum, in summer, they arch overhead, end to end, could be considered to remain one of the appearing to touch, their crowns gracefully most important minerals in the world. Iron, crowding out the cars and buses that weave indeed, is essential for the movement of their way down the avenue in flashes of red. petroleum as the following tale will tell. When I think of Aobadori I think of these In the 1950s, Standard Oil (now Chevron) vibrant greens, the green of the forest in a discovered (and now owns) one of the larg- city, an atmosphere of viridescence (becom- est iron ore deposits of the world. The Crest ing green), in shades that can’t quite be property, located at the Snake River in reproduced. northern Canada, has a 43-46%Fe gradient. The iron ore would be used to construct gas ‘Midori’ is a name for green popularised pipelines for northern oil and gas projects. during the American occupation of Japan In the vicinity of the Crest property is the after the Second World War. Midori didn’t Bonnet Plume Coal Deposits, now called exist at all until the ‘Heian’ or ‘peace’ period Wind River Coal Field by its current owner 794-1185. According to historians, this was Promithian Global Ventures Inc. the final era of classical Japan, a time of high art and literature effected profoundly In 2002, Hatch, a multinational project by Buddhism and Taoism, among other management and consultancy company Chinese influences. Japan’s traditional based in Canada, produced a feasibility colour system, known as dentourio 伝統色 report for Promithian to consider the devel- had been established not long before: in 603 opment of the Crest deposit and the あなたは緑と青を見分けることができます by Prince Shot气ku. This colour system was か? intimately connected with his ‘Twelve Level Wind River Coal field. The report provides Cap and Rank System’ based on Confucian different scenarios to extraction and produc- Anata wa midori to ao o miwakeru koto ga values and the five Chinese elements, a tion of iron ore with the use of coal to run dekimasuka? social ordering system that determined rank the necessary facilities. by merit rather than heritage and certain Can you tell green from blue? colours were used as symbols of rank in References society. It is quite striking how many of his Kipling, Rudyard. 1910. Rewards and Fairies Some linguists use the word ‘grue’ to talk colours relate to plants, flowers and animals. London: Macmillan and Co. about languages where green and blue are protean categories, versatile if not exactly 84 85 Japan Blues Japan Blues Ao, however, came long before. It is one of ‘ao-kuchi-ba’ is ‘blue fallen leaves’. the four oldest colour terms, along with aka (red), kuro (black) and shiro (white). These ‘ao-ni’ is ‘the old mane of the blue-black words originally referred to contrasting cray’. But this is a yellow-green, closer to sensations: light was aka, dark, kuro, clear, fresh asparagus, nestled next to to the ‘inch shiro. Ao, refers to a kind of vagueness, or worm’ of Panetone colour (RGB 178,236,93). obscurity of light. Blue is the sky, the ocean, vague light. ‘ao-ni-bi’ is ‘blue dull’. Blue is the only of these four original ‘usu-ao’ makes me think of a lie (because ‘uso’ colours not to have a specific and sustained is a lie, or an exclamation of incredulity: religious significance in Shinto (Japan’s “really?!” Really, it just means dim or gloomy. ‘native’ religion that incorporates the worship of ancestors and nature spirits, and ‘ai-nezumi’ is an indigo-tinged grey; nezumi is belief in ‘kami’, a sacred power that can be means mouse. found in both the animate and inanimate). Red references the red tori gates of Shinto ‘mushi-ao’ makes me think of insects, used shrines; white the sacred places strung with to names bugs of all stripes, crickets, moths, ‘shimenawa’, the palest rope made of rice worms. This kind of ‘mushi’ is after the straw used in ritual purifications; monk’s blue iridescence of the jewel beetle’s wings robes are almost-black. Only blue is secu- (Chrysochroa fulgidissima), and the shim- lar. Blue is the colour of choice for school mer of a deep sea shark. uniforms, in ‘sailor style’ and other classic navy variations, and associated with working (mushi-ba can also mean being worm-eaten! class uniforms, and thus, work ethic. To be eaten by worms; to spoil; to ruin; to undermine; to gnaw at one’s heart; to The traditional Japanese Colour System destroy). is full of such vagaries, by which I mean wanderings. It includes ao-midori, a shade Such greens can be ‘glaucous’. Grey-greens that one might assume can be easily ‘trans- becoming blue, becoming dull and pale, like lated’ to a simple blue-green, like the the waxy leaves of cacti that don’t get wet in 2 Japan Blue The compound indican from the raw leaves familiar crayola-crayon colour the same the rain, or the grey-blue of the glaucous is converted by fermentation over a period blue-green since 1930. But not quite; ao-mi- gull, camouflaging with sea, in an Aberdeen Aizome藍染め is known as ‘Japan blue’. A of up to a year. Seeds are planted in March, dori is a shade that totters on the very edge sky. painter made the marks of these characters and plants are harvested in July and August, of the between, between blue, between kanji in my sketchbook, pointing out the then fermented and dried, which won’t be green. It’s a colour I can’t quite match, it Blue reflects the ocean, and in Japan, this differences for me between ao (blue) and (ai) done until the end of the year. Every week is neither numbered nor named on the mattersL the waters, the islands. Japan has indigo, in doing so connecting the blues I or so, the leaves are sprinkled with water ‘Western’ Panetone system. (It’s close to the six thousand eight hundred and fifty two was making with cyanotype blue prints to a and mixed. The result is sukumo. The dyer Carribbean green, but this has too much (though only four hundred and thirty larger culture history, one marked by labour, receives the sukomo and makes his mix with yellow, and the Sea green is too pale). After are inhabited). (I remember, years ago, made of the earth. ash lye, sake, water - lots of water - and lime, some thought, I settled on it being a kind proudly informing my Japanese students which slows down the fermentation process. of turquoise, but it is one that requires the of Scotland’s seven hundred and ninety, a Indigo, one of the oldest forms of colour Then, with care, eventually the flowers opacity of the stone. figure I’d only just learned. Only later did dyeing - the oldest evidence of indigo form - ai no hana, the indigo flower, a nest I realise the extent to which the islands dyeing in Japan dates back to the 10th of metallic bubbles, forming on the top of There are others from this system, more are essential to Japanese security, national century - can be obtained from a variety of the dye.

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