About the blond Cranes in the artwork:

1. Are they bleached or natural?

2. Does it any cultural significance, like high fashion or bravery or something?

3. Is this uniquely a Crane custom, or does every have a few blond samurai?

4. Can peasants go blond, or is that presumptuous?

Yeah, it should be white. To represent Doji Haiaku, Lady Doji and Kakita son who spent 3 years in the Shadowlands looking for his sister, the Crane Thunder. He didn’t find her but he rescued her sword. He returned with his hair completely white and mute. Lady Doji gave him a new name Daidoji, responsible for defending the Doji.

The Ashina on VERY rare occasions will have a child born with snow white hair, but that is not that common.

Iirc, some of them bleach their hair but some Crane actually have white / platinum blonde hair naturally.

On 5/7/2020 at 3:32 AM, welldressedgent said:

About the blond Cranes in the artwork:

1. Are they bleached or natural?

2. Does it any cultural significance, like high fashion or bravery or something?

3. Is this uniquely a Crane custom, or does every have a few blond samurai?

4. Can peasants go blond, or is that presumptuous?

1- Mostly bleached, sometimes occurs naturally.

2- Already answered. It's in honour of Doji Hayaku, son of Doji and Kakita, brother to Yasurugi and Konishiko, the first Daidoji.

3- Crane custom. As the clans intermarry there may be a few instances of samurai in other clans with naturally occurring white hair. Also I would assume vitiligo occurs in Rokugan. Depending on where you feel your Unicorn may have travelled flat out blondes wouldn't be out of place with the Unicorn. The other non standard hair that occurs in Rokugan is red and red-brown that tend to appear among the Kitsu and Matsu.

4- Your Rokugan, you decide. Personally I like to have sumptuary laws and would treat a commoner doing that as acting above their class, with all the possible consequences that may incur being on the table.

Thanks guys, I knew it had to be something like that! I'm thinking it might be a tell for a noble bastard. Same way Game Of Thrones used it.

That certainly works 🙂

Lion clan uses to have a popular tradition amongst some samurai of dying their hair a sandy blond/rusty blond (like Lion fur). Alot of older art showcased that.

A fun-fact that might be relevant to this-- Japanese/Koreans are actually red-heads with such very dark hair that it becomes effectively black. When you use just a bit of bleach, either artificial or from exposure to the sun, it takes on a dark reddish-orange hue. You can also see it if you take a strand of hair and hold it up to the light.

Another fun fact-- pretty much the only whitening agent that would be available to people living in Rokugan's level of technology is made from human urine. So when you see all those Cranes with bleached white hair and white/light colored kimonos... just remember that for a moment. Of course, one has to imagine the actual process of making the bleach is handled by the eta-- so its possible that the Crane don't even know what they are rubbing in their hair to make it white.

You just think about what fuss they make about getting blood on them and it becomes all the more humorous.

5 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

one has to imagine the actual process of making the bleach is handled by the eta-- so its possible that the Crane don't even know what they are rubbing in their hair to make it white.

I'd imagine so. One thing I try to include in RPG sessions featuring them - hinin are the absolute social bottom of the pile, but whilst there will be the 'Baldrick-san' equivalents who muck out the toilet, fullers, leatherworkers, butchers, torturers/surgeon's aides, and so on are hinin too: those are some pretty skilled professions, even if they don't get the respect they deserve.

On 5/7/2020 at 11:41 PM, welldressedgent said:

Thanks guys, I knew it had to be something like that! I'm thinking it might be a tell for a noble bastard. Same way Game Of Thrones used it.

Definitely. Naturally platinum blond hair is extremely rare even amongst the Crane heirocracy - a peasant being born with it would inevitably raise the question of who couldn't keep it in their kimono.

Last Province talked about Crane recently, and actually noted some basis in earlier lore for some Crane to be born with blue eyes, pale skin and white hair naturally and a sign of beauty and Lady Doji's favor - i/e albinism.