Color Kanji in Japanese: Red, Blue, White, Black & More
The basic color kanji — 赤 青 白 黒 黄 — behave as both nouns and adjectives. Learn their readings and the adjective endings that trip learners up.
Colors in Japanese come in two grammatical flavors: some are true adjectives (you can say “a red car” in one word), others are nouns that need の. The kanji are the same; the grammar differs.
The i-adjective colors
Four colors conjugate as i-adjectives — red, blue, white, black:
| Kanji | Color | Adjective | Noun |
|---|---|---|---|
| 赤 | red | 赤い (akai) | 赤 (aka) |
| 青 | blue/green | 青い (aoi) | 青 (ao) |
| 白 | white | 白い (shiroi) | 白 (shiro) |
| 黒 | black | 黒い (kuroi) | 黒 (kuro) |
The noun-only colors
Most other colors are nouns and need の before a noun: 緑の車 (midori no kuruma, a green car), not “midorii.” These include 緑 (midori, green), 黄色 (kiiro, yellow), 茶色 (chairo, brown), 紫 (murasaki, purple).
The famous 青/緑 overlap
青 historically covered both blue and green, which is why a green traffic light is called 青信号 (ao shingō) and fresh greenery is 青葉 (aoba). Modern Japanese has 緑 for green, but the old usage survives in many fixed phrases.
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