Dictionary of Color Combinations

Sanzo Wada (1883–1967) was active at a moment when colour use in art and design was becoming increasingly avant-garde and diversified. His response was to focus systematically on colour relationships — how colours work together, what combinations are possible, how traditional Japanese colour sensibility could be documented and transmitted. This book is the result: 348 colour combinations, each named and presented as swatches, drawn from Wada's decades of research and practice.

The combinations are not abstract exercises. They come from someone who used colour across an extraordinary range of disciplines: painting, art school instruction, kimono design, fashion, stage design, and film costume. Wada received the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1954 for Gate of Hell, and was recognised as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government in 1958. He founded the Japan Standard Color Association in 1927 — now the Japan Color Research Institute — which established the first systematic framework for colour standardisation in Japan.

The book was mentioned in a VSG session on colour theory — alongside the Chromosphere podcast and the work of Kai Rennes — as a practical reference that rewards slow browsing. Unlike Pastoureau's social histories, this is not a book you read from start to finish. You return to it. You use it. The combinations have names that carry their own poetry, and the swatches have a quiet authority that comes from being grounded in a specific cultural and material tradition.

An interactive version of the combinations is available online at sanzo-wada.dmbk.io for anyone who wants to explore before buying.

Published by Seigensha, Japan. Available in two volumes.