Sur le rouge et le blanc du drapeau japonais

"Rising Sun Flag: It is the red and white of the flag which is important to us here. White represents the yin (陰 or いん) or male element and red the yang (陽 or よう) the female. Elsewhere I noted: "Another question arises from something else I read a number of years ago, but for the life of me have been unable to find again to check my sources. The quote said that the red and white of the Japanese flag represented the red or female element and the white was the male. It doesn't take a stretch of the mind to understand the sexually oriented use of these symbolic colors. The contrast of the two in combination is - if this is true - a clear analogy to the yin-yang concept."

Well, I finally sound something on the subject, but not exactly what I was looking for. "Let us return to the red and white, which colors have had a metaphorical resonance across Asia, from ancient Iran to Japan. The Chinese conception, reflected in the funerary rituals, is that the (red) flesh comes from the mother, whereas the (white) bones come from the father. More specifically, the mother's 'red drop' contributes the skin, blood, flesh, fat, heart, and soft, red viscera; whereas the father's white drop contributes the hair, nails, teeth, bones, veins, arteries, ligaments, semen - in other words, all that is white, hard, structural. This is very much like the Greek conception, described by Aline Rousselle, in which semen goes to build the 'noble white parts.' Therefore, a woman who wants a son must 'whiten' or 'masculinize' herself. According to Aristotle, 'Man produces sperm because he is a warm nature, such that he possesses a capacity for bringing about an intense concoction of the blood, which transforms it into its purest and thickest residue: sperm or male seed. Women cannot perform this operation. They lose blood, and at their warmest can only succeed in turning it into milk... Thus, the ultimate difference between the sexes lies in the fact that one is warm, and dry and the other is cold and wet, qualities that reveal themselves in their aptitude or inaptitude for achieving concoction.' Incidentally, this distinction is presented as the ultimate rationale and justification of the androcentric social order. The Egyptian theories of reproduction, too, ascribed the bones to the male principle and the flesh to the female."

Source: http://www.printsofjapan.com/Index_Glossary_Kutsuwa_thru_Mawari_dourou.htm