/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>20739372
It literally comes from a picture of two people fucking.
Or at least that's what a lot of sources would have you believe, it's pretty hard to tell what's right here considering this shit is ancient and there seem to be multiple explanations for it. English wiktionary has a different entry than Japanese wiktionary for instance.
It appears the (old Japanese) word いろ itself originally referred to familial relations and later became attributed to romatic & sexual relations and female beauty, and then to just the beauty of things in general and their color, because colorful things are beautiful or something to that extent.