[twic]

The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li...

Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means.

The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out that it would be better if the law explicitly said green. Rather than changing the law or letting things be, the government ordered lights be changed to blue-green. This is, on the face of it, completely insane behaviour, but neither article attempts to explain why the government did this.

[fenomas]

I just scanned a few articles on this. TFA and its source don't mention this, but the first JP traffic law for traffic lights (from 1930) used midori/green, following US standards. But apparently newspapers mostly used "ao" for whatever reason, and that was the usage that became widespread. Then later on (1947) the traffic law was updated to say "ao", presumably to match common usage. Of course the actual lights were green the whole time.

Then in the 1970s the rules changed to recommend bluer shades of green, and new lights made afterwards reflected that. None of the articles I found gave a concrete reason; a few suggested bluer lights were easier to see, and a few implied the change was motivated by the "ao" name.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> This is, on the face of it, completely insane behaviour, but neither article attempts to explain why the government did this.

How is it insane? Did the outcome turn out to be chaos and mass murder? Are the Japanese people all becoming lunatics due to the cognitive burden of trying to remember the differences between one foreign color word and the other? Will the Reticulan Space Navy destroy the Japanese for their insults to chromaticity?

This isn't insane. It's just boringly bureaucratic.