Hair color

Hair color of anime, light novel, and manga characters is not randomly selected. In some cases its color can express significant elements of that character's personality, based on color symbolism in Japan. The emphasis of its representation is more strongly related to symbolic meaning; they are not there to represent any racial, ethnic, social, religious or any other group. However, some newer anime and manga are using mixed hair colors where there is a primary color and an accent color or a mix of colors. Some examples are Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba where most of the characters have the primary/highlight mix and Senku of Dr. Stone has white/light gray hair with green accents at the ends.

While many attribute some of the traits hair colors are supposed to project as Japanese symbology, many of the characteristics are adopted by Japanese based on their interpretation of foreign media, since actual variety of hair colors is more common in foreign animation and live-action media.

Suggested symbolic meanings of various hair colors

 * Black
 * Black hair is default hair color, but it can carry deeper meaning. Characters with black hair often have had a dark past. These characters are often intelligent, powerful and refined, but usually only as a main character or an important supporting character. They may seem mysterious. They are generally portrayed with a lot of positive character traits.
 * Other traits: Power, evil, emptiness, sadness, depression, mystery, sophistication, intimidation, death.


 * Blonde/Yellow
 * Inline with the usual bright color, characters with yellow/blonde hair are confident, happy, and naïve. They can fall into a number of categories. Just like Western media, there’s the dumb blonde who acts childish, selfish and stubborn. Then, there are troublemakers who have certain likeable quirks but attract chaos. Lastly, there are prince charming characters who are chivalrous and humble. A very common trope is blonde hair as a signifier of a caucasian background or having spend significant time overseas. It can also imply wealth and easy access to resources.
 * Other traits: Joy, wealth, heaven, childlike, courage, foreigner (caucasian).
 * Blonde/yellow hair often means "someone special", especially in shōjo stories.


 * Blue
 * Blue is associated with nature. It can indicate being quiet to being cold and calculating, much like still water and cold temperatures. Some other characteristics include being wise, talented, mature, intuitive, and aware of their own emotions. They tend to be soft-spoken, intellectual, strong-willed, and sometimes introverted. Many blue-haired characters have flattened affect (less display of emotion or expression).
 * Other traits: Patience, peace, calmness, cold, stability, dependability, loyalty.
 * Some characters tend to get portrayed as refined, tradition-oriented and feminine, quite often even as examples of the Yamato Nadeshiko ideal (poised, decorous, kind, gentle, graceful, humble, patient, virtuous, respectful, benevolent, honest, charitable, and faithful), although ironically Nadeshiko means pink.


 * Brunette/Brown
 * Brown is a more mundane color and is the default hair color for characters who project normality, usually reserved for the protagonist. Characters with brown hair are supposed to project as warm, friendly, reliable, approachable, and comfortable. Some stories try to subvert this by making antagonists or anti-heroes have brown hair.
 * Other traits: Conformism, simplicity, endurance.
 * While they are supposed to be predictable, they often fall into the category of boring. However, brown hair often hides a jaded, analytical personality underneath a normalized exterior.


 * Gray/silver
 * Gray or silver hair is often difficult to distinguish from white hair and the hair color is almost always of the lighter shade. As with white hair is is commonly associated with older background or supporting characters. Light gray or silver usually indicates experience, intelligence, and wisdom. They often have unusual knowledge or some savant-like skill. It is rare for them to be innocent or have energetic or lively personalities, but there are exceptions (like Atsushi Nakajima of Bungō Stray Dogs).
 * Other traits: Reliability, intelligence, maturity, stoicism, boredom.
 * Dark gray is usually only used for much older characters and is somewhat rare overall.


 * Green
 * Green is often associated with earth and mother nature. Characters with green hair can imply a calm and healing presence, but they can also do the exact opposite and bring unpredictability or wildness. It is usually quickly evident if they ar easy-going, trustworthy and tolerant or poisonous and imprudent. However, they often side with the protagonist, but are usually not the protagonist or focus.
 * Other traits: Fortune, envy, harmony, life, vigor, tranquility.
 * Green is one of the more uncommon hair colors for protagonists or notable characters. Darker shades of green typically carry similar connotations as blue.


 * Orange
 * Orange hair radiates is courage, optimism, loyalty, spirit, and energy. They can also be selfish, annoying, and attention-seeking. In some cases, they can be self-centered troublemakers. Orange is a popular color for protagonists. Tendency to eat abnormal quantities of food is also associated. Often confused with "red hair".
 * Other traits: Energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, attention seeking.
 * Dark orange hair color is uncommon, but lighter orange tending toward blonde is more common.


 * Pink
 * Characters with pink hair signify romance and innocence. Pink hair is usually reserved for female characters. They are daydreamers and idealistic, with a child-like innocence. In many cases, they bring positive energy to the people around them. Male characters with pink hair can be outsiders or perverse. Some stories like to subvert this hair color representation by making the character random and unpredictable.
 * Other traits: Femininity, purity, childlike, love, kindness.
 * More rare until after the mid 2000s, the moe phenomenon happened and made this color the industry standard for dozens of “cutesy-moe-female-leads”.


 * Purple
 * Characters with purple hair are often portrayed as enjoying being in the spotlight. The color projects influence, nobility, and power, such as royal figures. They are sometimes given goals that revolve around gaining prestige, wealth, and material possessions. They can be cultured, dainty, and mysterious.
 * Other traits: Royalty, wisdom, spirituality.
 * Purple is an uncommon color for hair color and has the most variants of shade (dark purple, purple-ish brown, purple-ish gray, and purple-highlighted black).


 * Red (usually a bit orange and not dark red)
 * Characters with red hair are often passionate, adventurous, and enthusiastic. On the other hand, they can be hot-headed, aggressive, and feisty. They portray leadership qualities with their headstrong personalities. Some characters with red hair are more calm and disciplined. It can often project a more jaded or intense version of love, so these characters can be obsessive or possessive.
 * Other traits: Passion, aggression, energy, love (basically strong emotions).


 * White
 * Many older characters, of course have white hair, but white hair also symbolizes a strong-willed, highly skilled, and mysterious character. In many cases, characters with white hair have special abilities. However, white hair can also symbolize death, evil, or the supernatural.
 * Other traits: Fear, simplicity, innocence, humility, apathy, heaven (can also mean death).

Light novel and manga confusion
Since most light novels and manga only have a few color illustrations (covers are usually guaranteed to be color), many characters may have been intended by the author to have different hair colors, but they are never represented with a hair color.

When the source material gets an anime adaptation, someone usually has to decide a hair color to give non background (aka mob) characters, and sometime this can run counter to the expectations of the reader audience. This was a problem recently when the "Wano Country Arc" of One Piece was adapted and readers had the expectation that Wano Country characters would only have a couple of different hair colors, but the studio (possibly with the author's input) gave characters a much wider and more unpredictable variety of hair colors than the readers were expecting. It's not clear if there is a solution to this problem of reader confusion, but it demonstrates how traditional print media stories can cause confusion based on expectations of hair color when they get adapted to anime.

So, when you see anime characters with particular hair colors, unless the author or anime creators are following expected tropes, readers should expect some surprises. Sometimes hair color is mostly just to distinguish between different similar looking characters.

How real-life hair color is treated in Japanese culture
In real-life Japanese culture, a variety of hair color is actually rare unless the people are past high school age and due to the conservative rules of many companies, salarymen and office ladies rarely exhibit hair color variety outside shades of brown.

In fact, until very recently (2020+) most schools had many rules presumably to promote conformism and group unity such that variety of hair color was actually forbidden. As recently as 2021, a Japanese court affirmed an Osaka school's right to force a student with naturally brown hair to dye it black to meet requirements. The student achieve a minor victory in that the court forced the school to pay her ~$3K for emotional damage, but she had sought over $20K. The Osaka case also took around 4 years before a ruling was hadned down. While Tokyo has even more recently (2022) issued a directive to not enforce many of these kind of rules, this hasn't changed for the majority of the rest of Japan.

As mentioned, these kind of restrictions also extend to the workplace. Office workers almost never dye their hair anything beyond light brown and even workers in medical settings have hair color restrictions and some even more bewildering and seemingly irrational rules.