What 紺 means
It means navy, a dark blue with a faint reddish cast.
The Han-era 說文解字 defines it as deep-blue silk with red showing: a textile term from the start. Japanese indigo dyeing later gave it a practical wardrobe life, from court and warrior dress to everyday cotton and workwear.
紺色 is the color as a noun, 濃紺 deepens it to dark navy, and 紺屋 means an indigo dyer. 藍 is the plant and dye; 紺 is the finished dark shade.
In Japanese, 紺 is an ordinary color word with a clothing-and-textile feel.
Do not treat 紺 as an exact synonym for 藍 or English navy.
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Who writes 紺
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 紺 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find 紺
- Also called
- kon · kon-iro · navy
- Search it as
- koniro · indigo · 紺色 · 濃紺 · 紺屋
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
紺\7D3ACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.