Chrysochroa fulgidissima, "jewel beetle" or tamamushi in Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 (Japanese

Japanese writing system

The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...

 kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

: 玉虫、吉丁虫 katakana

Katakana

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...

: タマムシ; lit. 'gem-bug'）is a metallic woodboring beetle of the Buprestidae family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

.

Characteristics

This beetle is native to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It is typically found in woods or forests during summer and can grow between 30–41 mm (1.2–1.6 ) in length.

The Tamamushi-no-zushi, 玉虫厨子, (Tamamushi shrine), an Asuka Period

Asuka period

The , was a period in the history of Japan lasting from 538 to 710 , although its beginning could be said to overlap with the preceding Kofun period...

 miniature shrine located at Hōryū-ji Temple

Hōryū-ji

is a Buddhist temple in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Its full name is Hōryū Gakumonji , or Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law, the complex serving as seminary and monastery both....

, Nara prefecture, was decorated with lacquer and oil painting on wood, gilt bronze plaques, and with beetlewing

Beetlewing

Beetlewing, or beetlewing art, is an ancient craft technique using iridescent beetle wings practiced traditionally in Thailand, Myanmar, India, China and Japan.-Tradition:...

work using the iridescent wings of the Chrysochroa fulgidissima beetle.

Tamamushi-iro

Since this bug has iridescent wings that glow lengthwise with different colors depending upon the light angle, one cannot be sure exactly which color it is . Therefore it gave rise to the expression tamamushi-iro (tamamushi color), in reference to a convoluted statement that can be interpreted in more ways than one.

The term tamamushi-iro is used in the context of Japanese officialdom, when politicians or bureaucrats use language that is unclear.