Thanks Shinpachi,
Yes I understand the difference between Japanese term for "green" during WWII and what it refers to today and that it does indirectly describe the shade. In western world we add an adjective to describe the shade of green eg, forest green, grass green, cactus green because it connects the shade with some inanimate object that we recognize. However, the Japanese do the same as they describe bamboo green as "aotake" etc.
What is interesting is if we look at WWII J-A/C relics and the paint coating we can see how the shade of green is affected by the type and quantity of light that reflects the color back to our eyes. This reflective quality is referred to as SPECULARITY.
Original relic access door from Navy Type 0 3 seat Seaplane
Suitei (E13A Jake) recovered from Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, 1943:
Can anyone say what part of the JAKE this access door/panel came from?
The interesting thing is the flash used shows how the shade of green changes due to the access door being curved. So in the center the dark green appears lighter while at the edges it is much darker,
Now consider the light on the green crosses of the surrender Betty bombers. The crosses are in the vertical pane so there is a lower (darker) specular value compared to how the crosses would appear if in the horizontal pane. Also consider the white surrounds to the crosses. The brightness of the white forces the pupils in our eyes to close down reducing the light that comes in thus making the green crosses appear much darker (almost black).
The camera and film acts in much the same way as our eyes although the one key difference is that film has a far smaller range of shades than our eyes. We see millions of colors while the camera/film sees a much more restricted range. I'm talking about Kodachrome film here. Obviously modern day digital cameras see a far greater range of colors than those that were around 75 years ago.
Don't you wish someone could go back to Ieshima with a digital camera? Would we see the green crosses with much more clarity?
Credit: eBay Auctions
JEC