From the past, as one type of contact lens worn overlapping the cornea of the eye, several colored contact lenses have been proposed. As shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. JP-A-60-235115 (Patent Document 1), almost all of these prior art colored contact lenses are colored in the area covering the dark part of the eye for which the color of the iris can be seen through the cornea, and make the dark part of the eye part look like a different color from the actual color. Because of that, this merely provides a colored contact lens that only colors more to the inner circumference side than the boundary line (limbus) of the dark part of the eye and the white part of the eye.
Meanwhile, proposed in PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. JP-A-2008-511025 (Patent Document 2) is a colored contact lens for which a colored area is formed with a larger outer diameter than the limbus, which colors also as far as the white part of the eye. This colored contact lens makes the outer diameter of the dark part of the eye larger and strongly emphasizes and clarifies the outer edge, thus making it possible to make the overall facial expression appear cute and bright, and these are already available on the market.
However, the same as with the colored contact lens noted in Patent Document 1, the colored contact lens noted in Patent Document 2 is the same in that it focuses only on making the appearance of the dark part of the eye part different. Then, with the goal of making the dark part of the eye part of the lens wearer appear larger and have the outer edge stand out to others, the outer circumference edge part of the colored area is formed using a clear, circular line, and the outer edge of the colored area is a clearly visible line.
However, as a result of earliest study based on evaluation of several samples by the inventors of the present invention, with the colored contact lens noted in Patent Document 2, though it Was possible to give third parties a different evaluation image of the expression of the wearer, we found that this was still insufficient in terms of making the “eye” itself look beautiful. Specifically, the colored contact lens noted in Patent Document 2 simply makes it possible to say the dark part of the eye looks bigger,” and the color of the dark part of the eye is different,” and with that alone, it is difficult to say that this is sufficient in terms of showing the beauty of the overall eye including the dark part of the eye and the white part of the eye,
To say this another way, the colored contact lens noted in Patent Document 2 can also be thought of as intending to make the clear colored line at the outer edge of the dark part of the eye stand out sharply. However, when the boundary line of the dark part of the eve and the white part of the eye are made to stand out as this kind of sharp line, this gives too much of an artificial impression to others, making it is easy to perceive them as being robot eyes (artificial eyes), and because of that, especially for a typical person who is not a model or the like, it was determined that it is difficult to say that the goal of “making the overall eye look beautiful” can be achieved.