A Y/C separation circuit according to the present invention includes: a pattern determination section in which video signals "a", "b", and "c" of three lines from which a frequency band of a chrominance subcarrier is extracted through BPFs to determine whether an addition/subtraction result of (b-a), (b+a), (b-c), (b+c), (c-a), and (c+a) is positive or negative, thereby determining relations in amplitude and phase between the video signals "a", "b", and "c"; and a filtering section in which one of plural filtering operations for separating a chrominance signal is selected in accordance with the determination result sent from the pattern determination section to output a chrominance signal through the selected filtering operation.