A Dictionary of Color Combinations Vol. 2

The first volume reprinted Wada's 1933–1934 collection and became an enduring reference, praised by Die Zeit as a source of inspiration filled with "hues we didn't even know existed." This second volume reaches back to two further works Wada published in 1935–1936 and 1938, bringing the total archive into one place.

The book divides into two distinct sections. The first presents 72 colour combinations of three to seven colours, each themed on one of the twelve months of the Japanese year — seasonal colour as a design system, rooted in the precise observation of light, foliage, fabric, and ceremony across the calendar. The second presents 165 combinations drawn from Japanese fashion, interior, and graphic design of the 1910s to 1930s — a period of enormous visual invention, when Western modernism and traditional Japanese aesthetics were being renegotiated in real time.

Both sections include colour names in Japanese and English. The book also contains 172 removable colour chips — making it a working tool as much as a reference, something you can cut up, hold against fabric, place beside other colours, carry to a print shop.

Read alongside Volume 1 the two books give a comprehensive picture of Wada's colour thinking. Volume 1 is the broader collection; Volume 2 is more specific — seasonal and period — and may be the more useful of the two for anyone working with historical reference or Japanese aesthetic traditions.

148 × 105 mm · 336 pages · Softcover · Japanese and English · Seigensha, 2020 · ISBN 978-4-86152-772-2