Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-173.32.47.67-20150326171158/@comment-26366352-20150518130126

If you put a cloth/sheet on a body, then it is most likely that they are dead. It's not just Japanese culture. White is the color of death, bones, silence, coldness. Of course Hide is dead.

They made made Kaneki's kair white because it would look like he had the marie antoinette syndrome, where your hair turns white quickly because of intense stress. One other anime character had this - Victorique de Blois from Gosick. They made the flowers white so the violent nature of red (blood) would be emphasised.

So white doed symbolise death, but also innocence to some extent.