It might sound somewhat unimportant, but the use of this word actually shows how the Japanese language has evolved over the last 30 years. And it highlights the cultural differences in how we describe color in different countries.
The fact you’re reading this suggests you speak English, so you probably know how to describe colors as red, blue, green, and so on. How we get to those colors and what shades we define, starting from black and white, is somewhat intriguing.
The 1969 book Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution suggested that there was a hierarchy of colors in all cultures, starting with black and white, then things like red and blue, and finally more descriptive colors like orange or pink.
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