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Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

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Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#51

Post by cxrlosfx »

Red cabbage or Blue Cabagge, in northern Germany is also called red cabbage (Rotkohl), same color for some regions of Austria and Switzerland (Rotkraut).

In southern Germany it is called Blue Cabagge (Blaukraut).

If you ask people in Germany what the color of the vegetable is, they will answer "purple" (lila). There are some strange ways in the evolution of a language, depending on the region and events in the region.

It's normal, whatever normal means in this case, to think that a color is the same as a similar hue, in my example above, between red and blue you can find purple, violet "lilac" hues.

As a personal anecdote, the name for (orange) carrot in Southern Bavarian dialect is Gelberübe, Rübe for root vegetable and Gelb for yellow, also yellow is connected with orange in the brain and the language of the people.

A purple carrot has the honor to be called "lilane GelbeRübe", or purple yellow vegetable root in English.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#53

Post by fenomas »

twic wrote: post #6

The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li... Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means. The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out t…

I just scanned a few articles on this. TFA and its source don't mention this, but the first JP traffic law for traffic lights (from 1930) used midori/green, following US standards. But apparently newspapers mostly used "ao" for whatever reason, and that was the usage that became widespread. Then later on (1947) the traffic law was updated to say "ao", presumably to match common usage. Of course the actual lights were green the whole time.

Then in the 1970s the rules changed to recommend bluer shades of green, and new lights made afterwards reflected that. None of the articles I found gave a concrete reason; a few suggested bluer lights were easier to see, and a few implied the change was motivated by the "ao" name.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#54

Post by quietbritishjim »

Prcmaker wrote: post #8
acadapter wrote: post #4

Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.

I learned this lesson in my first ever public lecture. Approximately 10% of my audience had some form of colour blindness, rendering the majority of my figures incapable of communicating their intent. Since then I have rendered all figures for public consumption in black and white, and lines instead of surfaces where possible.

Depending on what exactly your figures were/are, you might benefit from the viridis colour map, available in matplotlib and R (and probably in many other places). It's colourful, so those without colour blindness get a richer display than if you used greyscale, and the colours chosen aren't too affected by most common forms of colour blindness. But for those that really can't see the colours, even if you literally just convert to monochrome, it still works. It also looks nice :-)

Here's a talk by the creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU

Here's a little article about it (with some R specifics): https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/in...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#56

Post by iopq »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #39
iopq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China, for example, the word for green 綠 is used for the light 綠 is used in Japanese for the color of green tea, but they use 青 for the green light There's also 翠 in Japanese to mean a bright green, which in Chinese also has a blue connotation (based on the color of the kingfisher who dives 淬 to catch fish)

I'm not doubting that multiple languages have that aspect to it, but as far as I know that does not result in blue traffic lights. I have not heard of an instance of a blue traffic light in China to go with your Chinese example.

Because they use 绿, not 青 so it would not result in blue lights

But in Korea they have the same confusion:

https://www.dreamstime.com/traffic-lights-road-blue-speed-li...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#57

Post by cthalupa »

Other people have covered the linguistic aspect enough so no need for me to rehash it, but, the picture in that article is far more blue than any traffic light I've seen in Tokyo in my months there. If I had to describe them with a single word, I'd choose green without hesitation - they just have a bit of a blue tinge to them.

Some example photos from google image that look closest to what I've seen: https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/item/129881591-traffic-l... https://depositphotos.com/editorial/traffic-lights-ginza-dis...

I've not really left Kantō so maybe they are more likely to be more prominently blue elsewhere? Kansai and Hokkaidō google image searches show (mostly) green traffic lights too.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#58

Post by fenomas »

yznlp wrote: post #29

Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the historical reason why ao encompasses both blue and green, so I think the concept of semantic field comes into play here. As an analogy, a MacBook is a type of laptop, and laptops, desktops and tablets are all IT devices (for lack of a better word). Apple might…

> Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and..

It isn't. TFA is vague on this, but in modern usage "ao" just means blue. There are a bunch of set phrases where it refers to various other cool colors, but to a modern listener "ao" on its own isn't a category including all those colors, it just means blue.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#59

Post by LeonidasXIV »

lozenge wrote: post #37
nemetroid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horizontal lights are not consistent across countries. The linked article has an image of a Japanese horizontal traffic light with red on the right, whereas an American traffic light would have red on the left.

And some countries don't have horizontal lights at all. https://youtu.be/sXbHdKJ1D78

I don't think I've ever seen horizontal lights in Europe at all. Fairly common in Japan though.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#60

Post by perilunar »

mathieuh wrote: post #5
acadapter wrote: post #4

Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.

Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.

With the switch from incandescent bulbs to LED traffic lights it would be very easy to change the shape of the lights: e.g. octagonal for stop, triangular for caution, and circular for go. Keep the colors, but add shape as well. Seems like an obvious and useful change to me.
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