Green to advance, red to stop, is a universal code that is recorded in our brains and is understood almost instinctively, regardless of language or culture. Except, of course, in Japan.
Why does Japan have blue traffic lights? It’s all about the tongue, tells the.
A country known for its distinctive traditions and cultural peculiarities, Japan has a difficult relationship with green colora particularity that reveals itself in the curious blue-green tone of some of its traffic lights.
Many traffic lights in Japan follow the globally accepted rule: red to stop, yellow for caution and green to advance.
This global standard is an important part of one of the United Nations signed in 1968, known as the “Vienna Convention on Road Signals and Signs”. Although dozens of countries have ratified the deal, Japan remains out of agreement – just like the United States.
Thus, the land of the rising sun has Very different traffic signs of the rest of the world, for great annoyance and confusion of tourists. Diversion of international standards is more notorious in bluish tom traffic lights That occasionally, but not always adorns the Japanese roads.
The reason behind the unusual color of the traffic lights is closely associated with the language. In the classic Japanese, The word for blue (a) is interchangeable with the term to denote green and cyan.
The Japanese feel little need to distinguish Among these colors, and they were grouped as variations of the same tone – As in Portuguese, we use the word “pink” to describe a whole range of tones, from pale pink to the strong magenta, even if they are significantly different.
Although modern Japanese has a separate word to strictly denote the Green (Midori)the distinction between green and blue is not very pronounced in the country’s culture. The Japanese refer to regularly to green traffic lights likeor blue.
The hazy distinction between blue and green It became a cultural point of pride in Japan. When the government established official standards for traffic lights in 1973, the Tone of green closer to blue.
In some parts of the country, especially those with older traffic light systems, the “advance” signal goes even further and appears with a turquoise tone – at least in foreign eyes. But this diffuse border between green and blue It’s not as strange as it looks.
How, what some people swear to the feet together that is green, many others guarantee that it is blue – Something you can check on ISMY.Blue, a “color perception” test that will never see blue or green again in the same way.
