English-speaking designers brief in "red." A senior Japanese designer asks which red — and waits, because the answer determines the rest of the palette. The tradition codified four primary reds, each from a different pigment source, each carrying centuries of specific cultural use. Wada's 1933 catalogue treats them as functionally distinct color identities, the way a Western catalogue might separate cobalt blue from ultramarine.
紅 Kurenai — safflower crimson
Kurenai is the deep crimson dyed from safflower ( 紅花, benibana). The pigment was so labour- intensive to produce — requiring petals processed through cold water, alkaline water, and acid — that during the Heian period kurenai cloth was reserved for court use, and laws periodically forbade commoners from wearing it. The colour signals ceremony, status, and the highest grade of formal attention. In practice it sits a fraction cooler and more purple than Western "crimson lake," and slightly less brown than burgundy.
Working palette: Crimson & Navy — the textbook Heian formal pairing.
茜 Akane — madder
Akane is the warmer, slightly orange-leaning red dyed from madder root (Rubia akane) — one of the oldest organic dyes used continuously in Japan, with archaeological evidence going back to the Yayoi period. Where kurenai is the crimson of the court, akane is the red of everyday cloth and folk textiles — kimonos for daughters, theatre costumes, traditional wedding accessories. It reads as warm, settled, and connected to specifically human craft tradition rather than formal authority.
Working palette: Madder Red & Evergreen — the classic "red and green" of Japanese textile combinations, without the holiday connotations of the Western pairing.
朱 Shu — vermilion
Shu is the bright orange-red of the cinnabar pigment used to lacquer Shinto torii gates, temple pillars, and ceremonial bowls. It's a mineral, not a dye — produced by grinding cinnabar (mercury sulfide) — and carries a completely different cultural register from the textile reds. Shu signals the sacred, the threshold, and the protective. The orange push against the red gives it a luminous, almost glowing quality that no purely-red pigment can match. In contemporary design it works for hospitality, religious or wellness brands, and any project that needs to feel "doorway."
Working palette: Vermilion, Black & Gold — the temple-architecture palette: shu against ink, lifted by gold leaf.
鉛丹 Entan — lead red
Entan is the heavier, slightly muted red made from lead tetroxide. It's the pigment of older temple architecture — used as a ground for shu lacquer, but also visible on its own in unrestored medieval structures. The colour reads ancient, weathered, and structural. Closer to brick than to crimson, it's the red you reach for when the brief wants gravitas without ceremony — historic identity systems, old-money editorial, and projects where wear is part of the story.
Working palette: Lead Red & Ink — entan as a dominant warm against deep sumi black; reads like a Tang-dynasty ink-and-wash painting on aged parchment.
How to pick the right red for a brief
Four working questions:
- Is the project formal or folk? Formal pulls you toward kurenai; folk pulls you toward akane.
- Should the colour glow or settle? Glow takes you to shu; settle takes you to entan or akane.
- Is age part of the brand story? Yes → entan. No → kurenai or shu, depending on register.
- What surrounds the red? Navy or indigo asks for kurenai. Evergreen asks for akane. Gold and ink ask for shu. Warm ink and aged neutrals ask for entan.
For the full historical-red set, the Red collection includes 24 palettes; the Heian-court collection covers the formal ceremonial register heavily, and maximalist palettes show the reds at their most fearless. To go deeper, every named-red page (kurenai, akane, shu, entan) lists every palette in the archive that uses the colour, with WCAG contrast already calculated against both white and black grounds.
— colorcombinations.org editorial
From the archive
Support the archive The full catalog, on your disk, as a thank-you.
- All 378 palettes (348 Wada + 30 editorial) in five formats
- Figma design tokens (W3C-spec JSON, drag into any file)
- Tailwind v4 + v3 configs — drop into any project
- CSS custom properties — every plate, one stylesheet
- 378 museum SVG plates — print-ready at any size
- Full JSON — colors, names, eras, moods, dominant hues
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