Abstract
Human skin color is one of the most common colors which we see in everyday life. The skin color distribution of young Japanese women has a trend that yellowish skin had higher lightness than reddish skin. On the other hand, it was shown that reddish skin appeared brighter than yellowish skin when both had the same lightness. (Yoshikawa et al., 2012). However, we showed the trend reddish skin appeared brighter is not common in observers in different countries, suggesting that the brightness perception of facial skin color is influenced by the diversity of skin colors and observers (VSS 2020). The present study investigated facial skin brightness perception among observers in four Asian countries: Thailand, China, Korea, and Japan. A young Japanese female face was used for the experiment. Test faces of four skin color shades were prepared, corresponding to the average skin colors of Japanese, Thai, Caucasian, and African individuals. A test image (with constant lightness but different hue angles) and a scale image (with the original hue but varying lightness) were presented side-by-side on a color-calibrated tablet display. Observers adjusted the brightness of the facial skin of the scale image to match that of the test image. Our result indicated that Japanese observers showed a trend that reddish skin appeared brighter than the yellowish skin, which was consistent with the previous study, but Thai, Korean, Chinese observers did not. This implies that the facial skin brightness perception of Japanese observers is not universal, and there is the influence of ethnicities, countries, or environments on the color perception of facial skin.