Edo era
Kite Brown & Gold— 鳶と黄金
The warm brown of a kite's wing lit by afternoon gold.
#8A5A3B
brown · 1 palette
Tobi
鳶
Kite brown
About Tobi
Tobi (鳶) is a deep, muted brown tone. Its hex value is #8A5A3B — that is
RGB 138, 90, 59, or HSL 24°, 40%, 39%.
Kite brown.
It holds 5.8:1 contrast against white, so Tobi works best for body text, headings, and UI labels. (On white it scores 5.8:1; on black 3.6:1.)
Across Sanzo Wada's 1933 Dictionary of Color Combinations, Tobi appears in 1 combination — most often paired with Kogane and Sumi.
The story of Tobi
Tobi (鳶) takes its name from the Japanese black kite, the bird whose wing colour the dye-makers were trying to match. The result is a warm ink-brown — darker than chocolate, redder than sepia, with a particular rust undertone that reads as weathered rather than aged. It's a workhorse warm-axis colour: traditional craft objects, lacquerware bases, leather tones in Edo-period merchant clothing.
Tobi anchors the warm side of a wabi-sabi palette without pulling toward saturation. It's the colour that lets a cream anchor and a celadon mid-tone read as 'tea ceremony' rather than 'Scandinavian.' Modern usage: heritage food brands, leather and craft goods, restaurant identity for places trading on age.
Palettes with Tobi
Tobi appears in 1 combination from the archive.
From the archive
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