Picking Colors | May 2026

Have you ever heard the cry of a peacock?

When I heard it for the first time, I thought it was a cat in heat or a child crying.
They cry out with an incredibly loud voice, "Meow-ooooh."
Peacocks are truly beautiful birds.

Because of their appearance, they have lent their names to colors throughout history and across the globe.
Admittedly, it is the males that are beautiful; the females are a dull brown.
And this intense cry, too, is said to be made by the males for the purpose of courtship.

Flashy decorative feathers and a loud voice.

Even for animals, winning love is hard work.

I always used to think that Da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo didn't paint beautiful people at all.
Back then, my sensitivity to diverse forms of beauty hadn't yet developed, and I only viewed things through the three scales of "like," "dislike," and "nothing."

The reason I became able to associate the color "Raphael Blue" with the "Madonna and Child" paintings
is thanks to those days when I could visit art museums with a child's ticket,

and the days my parents took me there time and time again.
Incidentally, there is also a blue called "Blu Michelangelo."
However, there is no color that bears the name of Da Vinci,
who is considered the pinnacle of the three great masters of the Renaissance.

Do you know the "Yellow Submarine Ondo"?

Of course, I think there is no one in the world who doesn't know the original Beatles song "Yellow Submarine" by now,
but until recently, I didn't know it had been turned into an "Ondo" (traditional Japanese folk dance song) in Japan.
Who would have thought that Japanese lyrics and shouts like "Ah, sore!" and "Ah, yoisho!" would fit so well?

What's more, it was produced by Eiichi Ohtaki.
Apparently, this Ondo drew frowns from Japanese Beatles fans.
But I find this blend of Japanese and Western styles interesting.

Because it makes me want to join in with the shouts.
I guess I'm Japanese after all.

For a long time, whenever friends asked me, "What's your favorite flower?"
I would answer, "Dandelion fluff."
On the way home, I loved finding the fluff growing here and there,

blowing on it, and scattering it as far as it would go.
That day, I was doing the same thing.

A girl I grew up with who lived behind us
got angry with a strangely serious look on her face, saying, "Stop it! If dandelion fluff gets in your ears, you'll go deaf!"
It was a baseless urban legend that was suddenly whispered about when we were children.
Every year when spring comes and the dandelions bloom, for some reason, I remember it.

When I was a child, I bought a few carnations for Mother's Day with my meager pocket money, and my mother was furious.
To my mother, the carnation

was just a "default Mother's Day flower," and she said she just couldn't bring herself to like it.
Likewise, she said she absolutely did not want an apron, another staple gift.
I'm sure my mother was looking for a little bit of "something special" not as a "mother,"
but as an individual person in the midst of a daily life where nothing special ever happens.
But you know, nowadays carnations aren't just red.

The future is even more colorful.