Etymology of 赤字/黒字 and seem to correspond directly to the English expressions 'red ink' and 'black ink', meaning a (financial) deficit/loss and surplus, respectively. If Wiktionary is to be trusted, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean use in the same way. Furthermore, French has the expression _être dans le rouge_ ('to be in the red'). Etymonline lists the first recorded instance of 'red ink' in English as being from 1929, and asserts that and spread in Japanese during the (1912-1926) to the start of (1926-1989). How did and come to be used in Japanese? Are the terms borrowed from a European language (or vice versa), or did the practice of using red ink for losses and black ink for profits arise independently?

Over the years, I've found Shogakukan's (KDJ) to be a good resource for etymologies and term dating. Their entry here at Kotobank lists a first citation in Japanese to 1929, roughly in line with the appearance of the term _"in the red"_ in English, dated to 1926 in this Wiktionary entry.

The Japanese Wikipedia article on lists a slightly later appearance in 1931, close enough to the KDJ for rough purposes. This article notes that the Japanese term may have arisen as follows (my explanatory addition [in square brackets]):

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> The Japanese terms "red figures" and "black figures" may be derived directly from this Western bookkeeping [writing income and gains in black, and expenditures and losses in red], or they may be borrowings from the aforementioned Western languages.