Comparison of the poralized absorption spectrum and MO calculation shows that thepositive charge is distributed evenly on the two nitrogen atoms of pyronin Y. The analyses of NMR and X-ray photoelectron spectra support the above results. That is, for instance, eight resonance lines are found in the 13C NMR spectrum. The long axis polarized 555.4 and 256.5 nm bands are assigned to the S1←S0 and S8←S0 transitions, and the short axis polarized 396.5, 347.8 and 302.0nm ones to the S2←S0, S3←S0 and S5←S0 transitions, respectively.