¡°¡± is small enough to comfortably hold open in one hand ¡ª and yet few books its size can claim a similar influence on design, art and fashion both within Japan and beyond.

On Instagram, reel after reel has readers flipping through the book¡¯s pages and showing off their creations: , a lavender shirt and warm brown leather boots; a room with walls painted with a vermillion and crimson daybed; even a glam makeup look of .

Though it seems designed precisely for the visual churn of social media, the painstaking studies and 300 color paintings that comprise ¡°A Dictionary of Color Combinations¡± date back almost a century ¡ª to printmaker and color theorist Sanzo Wada.