Guys who received Valentine's chocolates from female friends or coworkers last Friday are expected to reciprocate with small gifts on ホワイトデー (howaitodē, White Day) on March 14. ホワイトデー is one of many color-related gairaigo (foreign loan-words, mostly English, written in katakana) now firmly established in Japanese. Others include レッドカード (reddokādo, red card), ブラックフォーマル (burakkufōmaru, black formal, i.e., black formal suit), グリーン (guriin, green, i.e., environmentally friendly), グレー (gurē, gray), and カラー (karā, color — as in ボディカラー, bodikarā, automobile-body color).

Happily, gairaigo invaders have not exterminated their color-kanji counterparts: Singletons such as 赤 (aka, red), 青 (ao, blue; green), 白 (shiro, white), 黒 (kuro, black), 緑 (midori, green), and 紫 (murasaki, purple) are alive and well in written Japanese. Many color words are two-kanji compounds with 色 (iro, color) falling in the second position: 茶色 (chairo, tea/color, brown), 黄色 (kiiro, yellow/color, yellow), 水色 (mizuiro, water/color, light blue), 肌色 (hadairo, skin/color, flesh color), and 桜色 (sakurairo, cherry blossom/color, light pink) are a sampling of the sumptuous Japanese palette.

Over 75 shades of red, which symbolizes good fortune, can be identified in Japanese. In "The Land of the Rising Sun," the sun is considered to be red instead of yellow, which explains why its national flag features a big red dot. Babies are called 赤ちゃん (akachan, red/term of endearment) because of their red appearance at birth. Aside from 赤 , other general-use red kanji include 紅 (beni, crimson, as in 口紅 , kuchibeni, mouth/crimson, lipstick) and 朱 (SHU, vermillion). 朱色 (shuiro) is the impressive color of oft-photographed Shinto shrine archways (鳥居, torii).