They Called It the Victory Color

Look at the old photographs and old pictures of Japan.

The working people are almost always dressed in blue. The peasant swinging his hoe out in the fields, the craftsman busy at the front of his shop — all of them in that deep blue of ai, the indigo. The shop curtains, the hand towels, the tabi split-toed socks, the hanten work coats — everywhere you looked, indigo, indigo, indigo. For a long, long age this country was steeped in blue.

Much later, a man who came from across the sea looked at this country's blue and called it "Japan Blue" — the blue of Japan. Or so I have heard.

Why did everyone wear so much indigo?

For one thing, cloth dyed with indigo is not eaten by insects, its color does not readily fade, and the cloth itself is made stronger into the bargain. So for the everyday wear of those who sweat at their labor day in and day out, there was no more welcome color than this. — But that is a matter of the plain wisdom of daily living.

And yet the blue of indigo has another story to it besides.

Steep the indigo into the cloth again and again, layer upon layer, and in the end it becomes the deepest blue of all — a blue close to black, like the night. This the old people called kachi-iro. And that kachi — it rings the same as kachi, to win.

And so this deepest indigo, an auspicious color for winning in war — the "victory color" — was greatly favored by the samurai, or so it has been handed down.

A color of daily life, and a color of war as well. — Indigo was a strange blue like that.

The place where I once saw both those faces at once — it was at a certain rural dye-works, in the age of the warring provinces.

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The autumn of 1541 (Tenbun 10). At a certain rural dye-works, great kame, jars sunk deep into the earth, stood in rows, one after another.

Peer into a jar and there was a thick, sluggish indigo liquor pooled within. On its surface a purplish foam rose, bubbling. The old dyer called this "the flower of the indigo, come into bloom." The rising of this foam, he said, was the very sign that the dye had come to its season.

I was there haggling over the price, meaning to lay in a few bolts of indigo-dyed cloth, when into the dye-works came a young man, attended by his mother.

A youth still fresh from the cutting of his forelock. And yet at his waist was thrust a sword far too splendid for him. His mother held a single roll of white cloth in her arms.

"Old Master," the mother said, bowing her head to the dyer. "My boy… he is to go out to the coming war. I beg you… dye this for us, in the deepest victory color there is. We mean to make it into an undergarment, to be worn against the skin."

The old dyer looked for a while from the white cloth to the youth's face, and back again.

The youth threw out his chest and spoke.

"Old Master. Lay it on thick, and dark. If I go into battle wearing the victory color against my skin, my fortune in war is sure to open. I will win myself some honor."

His voice was full of spirit. But the hand that gripped the sword — I could not help but see it trembling, ever so slightly. There was no way he was not afraid. It was his first battle.

The dyer said nothing, and plunged the white cloth down into the indigo jar with a splash.

And then — there, I saw a thing more wondrous than anything in the world.

The cloth, when he had let it steep a while and drew it up — it was not indigo blue. It was, of all things, a dull, yellowish green. When I let slip a startled "Why—," the dyer gave a sly grin. "Just you watch."

The old man spread the green cloth wide in both hands and let the wind play over it. And then — before my eyes the green of the cloth began to pale, and as though it were drinking in the color of the sky, it turned, moment by moment, toward blue, and blue. While I stood watching, the cloth had become, entirely, a vivid indigo.

It was for all the world like a conjuror's trick. My mouth fell open.

The dyer sank the cloth into the jar once more, and once more let the wind take it. Sink it, and air it. Sink it, and air it. With each turn the blue deepened by a shade — from green to blue, from blue to deep indigo, from deep indigo to the night-dark victory color.

The old man repeated it, over and over. Far more painstakingly than for any ordinary victory color. Until the sun sank low he did nothing but sink the cloth and air it, sink it and air it. Even when I said, "Old Master, surely it is dark enough by now," the old man did not stay his hands.

"…Listen, young one," the dyer said quietly, airing the cloth as he spoke. It was less as though he were addressing the youth than as though he were speaking to the indigo itself. "The world sets great store by this — the victory color, the victory color, they say, because it chimes with winning. Well, that is fine enough. But me, now — I dye it with a somewhat different wish worked into it."

"A different… wish?"

"Indigo, now — it keeps the insects off. And the old folk say it keeps a wound from festering, too. Above all, it is stout, and its color does not fade. — Which is to say, it is the color that will guard your body, and stay at your side the longest of any. And me — more than any honor you might win, more than anything—"

The old man wrung the finished night-dark cloth tight in his hands. Drops of indigo fell from it, drip, drip.

"—it is in the wish that this color may carry you back here again, safe and whole, that I am dyeing it. Not so much the victory color, then. Think of it rather as the color of coming home alive."

The youth caught his breath and looked at his mother. She had bowed her head and was biting her lip. The spirited face of a moment before drained clean away from the youth — and in its place there peeped out a far younger face, the face of a child.

"…Old Master," the youth said, in a hoarse voice. "Thank you. …I will come back. Wearing this color, without fail."

I watched that freshly dyed indigo undergarment shine deep and blue in the evening sun. It was, to be sure, the victory color. But more than that — it was a blue into which a mother's prayer and a dyer's wish had been steeped, layer upon layer upon layer.

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Whether that youth came home safe or no — I do not know.

What I do know is the long, long story that came after.

When the age of war at last came to an end, that reverence for the "victory color" faded, somewhere along the way. But the indigo itself did not vanish. Far from it — the indigo that had been the samurai's color of good omen widened its footing and became the peasant's field clothes, the craftsman's hanten, and at last even the swaddling cloth of a newborn child. It let no insect eat it, it was stout, it did not fade — that power of it, the power to guard everyday life, was the part that lived on.

The color of war became the color of daily life. And so it dyed this whole country blue, and bluer — blue enough that a man from across the sea would want to call it "the blue of Japan."

Even now, whenever I catch sight of the deep blue of indigo somewhere, I find myself of a sudden remembering that dye-works. Sink the cloth, and air it; sink it, and air it — until the day went dark, wishing for nothing but that youth's safe return, layering the victory color deeper and deeper: those silent hands of the old dyer, stained with indigo, gnarled and knotted.

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