I colori nel Giappone antico

Abstract

For a long time, a tenacious prejudice has cultivated the idea that the West has produced the best ways of both knowing the world and organising existence. An integral part of this prejudice is the views on colour theories. Whether referring to the ancient Greeks, Goethe or Newton, for too long it has been thought (and sometimes still is thought) that it is the various Western colour theories that best describe the sensory experience that brings human beings into contact with colour. In a certain sense, that is, as theories, this is true. But it is not true that only colour theories allow us to have the best possible experience of colours. This observation is well illustrated by the case of ancient Japan, which lacked specific colour theories, but was very rich in colour sensitivity.