These included eight chromatic basic color terms (aka/red, ki/yellow, midori/green, ao/blue, pink, orange, cha/brown, and murasaki/purple) plus eight additional terms: mizu (“water”)/light blue, hada (“skin tone”)/peach, kon (“indigo”)/dark blue, matcha (“green tea”)/yellow-green, enji/maroon, oudo (“sand or mud”)/mustard, yamabuki (“globeflower”)/gold, and cream. Identification of basic long-standing color terms came as no surprise, but the use of "mizu" by almost everyone in the group is new and strong evidence that it should be included among 12 generally accepted basic Japanese color terms, the researchers concluded. Researchers from Japan and The Ohio State University collaborated on the study, which examines the color lexicon in Japan over time and compares the country's modern color terminology to words used in the United States. First, Japanese is spoken in a modern, highly industrialized society, where the chromatic environment is as diverse and colorful as anywhere on earth. that the Japanese words ao (blue) and midori (green) were used more or less interchangeably, in a usage pattern similar to the “grue” motif of Lindsey and Brown ( 2009 ) for color-naming systems with a single term for green-or-blue. In the languages that Lindsey and Brown have examined so far—the 110 languages spoken in nonindustrialized societies that were included in the World Color Survey (Kay, Berlin, Maffi, Merrifield, & Cook, 2009 [WCS]; Lindsey & Brown, 2006 ) as well as English (L&B), Somali (Brown, Isse, & Lindsey, 2016 ), and Hadzane (Lindsey, Brown, Brainard, & Apicella, 2015 )—the color terms glossed by cluster analysis correspond, with minor variations and some additions, to the standard list of universal BCTs from Berlin and Kay. In the U.S., native speakers often use the words "teal," "lavender," "peach" and "magenta," none of which has a commonly used Japanese equivalent. They were not allowed to use compound color terms like ki-midori (yellow-green) or modifier words like usu-murasaki (pale purple). A chromatic color term was defined as a term used by a subject to name one or more of the 320 chromatic colors in the WCS chart but never used by that subject to name any of the 10 achromatic colors (achromatic color terms were handled separately, as described later). In American English (L&B), for example, k-means analysis showed that cyan and turquoise were synonymous with teal. These collections of color samples can also be compiled and displayed as consensus plots (e.g., Figure 5 ) representing the color categories. Results 
 
 Descriptive statistics 
 
 The 57 Japanese subjects used a total of 93 unique color terms. The eleventh, ao/blue, deviates from American English in that the English blue covers all shades of light and dark blue, whereas ao generally means medium to dark blue. In contrast, we argue that light blue is now a basic color category among speakers of Japanese, and mizu is now a BCT. Of the 57 subjects in the present study, 54 used mizu to name two or more color samples, one named a single sample mizu, and one used sora, a synonym for mizu, to name the light-blue samples. Thus, only a single subject out of 57 failed to use any distinct term for light blue. 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. Whereas ao continued to be used to name some green things as well as blue things, and sometimes black and gray things as well, over the next centuries midori became restricted to green. "In Japan, 'mizu' is as different from 'blue' as 'green' is from 'blue.'" Moreover, L&B did not find an American English term corresponding to kon (dark blue). It also revealed six glossed color categories that are well represented in one language but not the other (panels with single terms). It might sound somewhat unimportant, but the use of this word actually shows how the Japanese language has evolved over the last 30 years. It is important to keep in mind that the two studies used different color palettes, and this may account for some of the differences in results between them. Aside from a few differences like this, however, the researchers noted that there were remarkable similarities between descriptions of colors between countries. Our k-means analysis showed that consensus maps for the eight chromatic basic color terms of Berlin and Kay (red, yellow, green, blue, pink, orange, brown, and purple) were strikingly similar across the two languages, with the exception of blue, which is truncated in extent in Japanese by the presence of mizu (light blue) and kon (dark blue). ### 
 
 The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Japan's Tohoku University. 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. How we get to those colors and what shades we define, starting from black and white, is somewhat intriguing. So even thought we might not have a word for mizu, we're not that different really. Journal of Vision, 16 (5): 14, 1–23, doi: 10.1167/16.5.14 . And there is vast difference in what colors we use from culture to culture and individual to individual. Retrieved from http://home.earthlink.net/∼khaitani1/manyoshu.htm Harkness, S. (1973). The color lexicon happens to be easier to study than other aspects of language evolution. There are areas of the world, for instance, where blue and green are lumped together - something color researchers call "grue." Language, contact, and vantages: Fifteen hundred years of Japanese color terms.
– In Japan, there are a dozen basic colors that almost everyone in a recent survey was able to name using one word. And 11 of them—black, white, gray, blue, green, yellow, red, purple, brown, pink, and orange—all overlap with the basic colors Americans can describe in one word. But in Japan, a 12th color, "mizu," which means water, has emerged as a basic color as distinct from blue as green is. Among Americans asked to name basic colors using just one word, "light blue" didn't come up as a color at all because we just don't have a single-word name for it, with the very rare exception of someone using "sky," scientists report in a Eureka Alert news release. Italians, however, do have their own word for the "mizu" color—"celeste," reports IFL Science. And Americans do have a single word for other colors, like "lavender," for which the Japanese do not. Researchers are investigating why certain color descriptions vary so dramatically while others are so consistent across cultures, and report on their findings in the Journal of Vision. While the case of light blue was a notable difference, it's only a recent one, given "mizu" was not a basic color name in Japan 30 years ago. "What's really interesting is there are remarkable similarities in color descriptions amongst people who live thousands of miles apart, and there can be differences between next-door neighbors," one researcher says. (How about blue wine?)