Japanese Color Atlas日本色譜Japanese Color Atlas treats traditional color names, readings, references, and digital HEX approximations as separate facts. Individual values may be factual or minimally protected, but curated compilations, descriptions, and ordering can be copyrightable. This atlas avoids copying any single proprietary compilation wholesale, and each record carries source attribution. Historical material terms are modeled separately from color-name records when the source supports a pigment, dye, or graph variant rather than a display value.
Reserved for records with named pigment or dye families supported by published physical analysis, such as FORS, visible reflectance, HPLC, XRF, or conservation-science sample studies. It does not mean the displayed HEX is direct sRGB/Lab colorimetry.
Color name or cultural usage has documented attestation; HEX remains a modern approximation, not a final historical value.
Appears in modern traditional-color compilations; deeper source verification is still in progress.
Conflicting sources, unclear name, or unstable modern mapping. Included for transparency, not as authority.
The atlas separates four evidence layers so users can see what each source actually proves.
A source such as Tobunken or JIS/JCRI supports that a color name, material term, or standardized usage exists.
A modern public reference gives a display value. This supports design use, not historical colorimetry.
A conservation or scientific source physically identifies a pigment/dye family through spectral, elemental, or chemical analysis.
A calibrated Lab/sRGB/XYZ measurement tied to the exact record. The current measured records do not claim this layer.
Tobunken and conservation sources often prove that a historical pigment, dye, material, or alternate graph existed. That evidence is preserved as context unless it also supports the exact color name and a defensible modern reference value.
Terms such as 烟子 / 烟紫 can explain enji-family materials without becoming the 臙脂色 color record.
Terms such as 依毘染 can share a reading with 葡萄染 while remaining a different historical graph and source claim.
Japanese Color Atlas extends the source-aware methodology developed for Chinese Color Atlas. It is published by Chroma Cathay alongside the Architecture Color Atlas and the Photo Palette Extractor.