The colour of 青黄色い


I'm reading Kawabata's 「雪国」alongside Seidensticker's translation from 1956. A
few pages in our narrator casts a glance at a sick man's hand and describes it
as 男の青黄色い手. Now I'm wondering what colour is being described. When I google
the term I get recipes for how to make green but I've a feeling the hand is
more distinctly both blue and yellow. However, Seidensticker translates it as
"ashen" - which seems not only to be an attempt at translating it into how one
in the English language would often describe the colour of a sick person, but
also wholly off considering the kanji at play.

To my inner eyes the distinct combination of blue and yellow seems right -
moreso than green or ashen - but I'm interested in how a native (or anyone
with a keen inner eye) perceives this.

よろしくお願いします。




There are many common expressions to describe unhealthy skin using colors (eg,
青白い, 赤黒い, 土気色の), but 青黄色い is not something in common use in modern Japanese.
青い is commonly associated with pale and anemic skins, but 黄色い皮膚 is usually
associated with jaundice (due to some liver disease). And according to
Wikipedia, this guy (行男) had intestinal tuberculosis, which rarely causes
jaundice. I'm at a loss to explain this further, but we can instantly
understand that his hand had a "very unusual and unhealthy-looking color",
anyway.

Should this have been translated literally as "blue and yellow" rather than
"ashen"? I'm not very sure, but "blue and yellow" seems a bit too vivid to my
inner eyes... After reading the first part of 雪国 ([available
here](http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/tachiyomi/bunko/index.php?pcd=321301000064)),
somehow I feel the author was trying to describe something more colorless,
土気色-ish skin by 青黄色い...




There are many common expressions to describe unhealthy skin using colors (eg,
青白い, 赤黒い, 土気色の), but 青黄色い is not something in common use in modern Japanese.
青い is commonly associated with pale and anemic skins, but 黄色い皮膚 is usually
associated with jaundice (due to some liver disease). And according to
Wikipedia, this guy (行男) had intestinal tuberculosis, which rarely causes
jaundice. I'm at a loss to explain this further, but we can instantly
understand that his hand had a "very unusual and unhealthy-looking color",
anyway.

Should this have been translated literally as "blue and yellow" rather than
"ashen"? I'm not very sure, but "blue and yellow" seems a bit too vivid to my
inner eyes... After reading the first part of 雪国 ([available
here](http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/tachiyomi/bunko/index.php?pcd=321301000064)),
somehow I feel the author was trying to describe something more colorless,
土気色-ish skin by 青黄色い...

