Shikifu Codex

Between 1933 and 1934 the painter and color standardist Wada Sanzō published Haishoku Sōkan (配色総鑑), a working dictionary of color for the designers of early-Shōwa Japan: numbered plates pairing two, three or four colors, each color named in both Japanese and English. The combinations — muted earths against saturated primaries, off-kilter pastels, confident near-clashes — still feel startlingly contemporary.

This site, Shikifu^* Codex, is the complete dictionary, digitized for people who build with color today: every color with its hex, RGB, CMYK, HSL, Lab and OKLCH values, click-to-copy; every plate exportable as CSS variables, a Tailwind theme or JSON; and, for the first time in the open, every original Japanese color name.

^* Shikifu (色譜) means “a register of color” — 色 (shiki), color, and 譜 (fu), a systematic table or notation — the same 譜 found in 楽譜 (a musical score) and 系譜 (a genealogy).