was a Japanese

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

costume designer A costume designer is a person who designs costumes for a film, stage production or television show. The role of the costume designer is to create the characters' outfits or costumes and balance the scenes with texture and colour, etc. The costum ...

who won the

Academy Award for Best Costume Design The Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for achievement in film costume design. The award was first given in 1949, for films made in 1948 ...

for his work on the

jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "historical drama, period dramas", it refers to stories that take place before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. ''Jidaigeki'' show the lives of the samurai, farmers, crafts ...

film '' Gate of Hell'' (1953). Wada reorganized the Japan Standard Color Association into the Japan Color Research Laboratory in 1945, and served as its president. He was a member of the

Japan Art Academy is the highest-ranking official artistic organization in Japan. It is established as an extraordinary organ of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, Bunkacho) in the thirty-first article of the law establishing the Ministry of ...

. His painting ''South Wind'' and other works are part of the

National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo The , also known as MOMAT, is the foremost museum collecting and exhibiting modern Japanese art. The museum, in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan, is known for its collection of 20th-century art and includes Western-style and ''Nihonga'' artists. It has a bra ...

collection.

Biography

Poster Olympische Sommerspiele Tokio 1940

Wada was born in Hyogo Prefecture, moving to Fukuoka with his family at age 13, and moved again to Tokyo at age 16 with the intention of becoming a painter. He began studying painting in 1899 with the famous painter

Kuroda Seiki Viscount was a Japanese painter and teacher, noted for bringing Western art theory and practice to a wide Japanese audience. He was among the leaders of the ''yōga'' (or Western-style) movement in late 19th and early 20th-century Japanese pai ...

. In July 1904, he graduated from

Tokyo School of Fine Arts or is a school of art and music in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained artists in the fields of painting, sculpture, crafts, inter- ...

. After graduating, he continued his studies in Europe between 1907 and 1915 as a Ministry of Education-sponsored art student. He traveled mainly to France, and studied Western painting as well as craft designs. In 1932, he became a professor of design at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, a position he held until 1944. In 1936, he designed the poster for the

1940 Summer Olympics The 1940 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XII Olympiad, was a planned international multi-sport event scheduled to have been held from 21 September to 6 October 1940, in Tokyo City, Japan, and later rescheduled for 20 July t ...

in Tokyo, which was later canceled. The poster depicts athletes with a

Nio Nio or NIO may refer to: * NI Opera, Opera company * Nio (Buddhism), guardians of the Buddha * Nio Inc., a Chinese electric automobile manufacturer * Nicaraguan córdoba, currency by ISO 4217 currency code * National Institute of Oceanography (d ...

statue in the background. In 1945, he reorganized the Japan Standard Color Association into the Japan Color Research Institute and became its chairman. In 1951, he completed Japan's first comprehensive standard color chart, "Color Standards." In 1953, he was in charge of color design and costume design for the

Daiei , based in Kobe, Hyōgo, is one of the largest supermarket chains in Japan. In 1957, Isao Nakauchi founded the chain in Osaka near Sembayashi Station on the Keihan train line. Daiei is now under a restructuring process supported by Marubeni ...

film '' Gate of Hell'', for which he won the

at the 27th Academy Awards in 1954. ''Gate of Hell'' was also highly praised for its beautiful colors at the 7th Cannes Film Festival in the same year, where it won the

Palme d'Or The (; ) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festiv ...

. He was named a

Person of Cultural Merit is an official Japanese recognition and honour which is awarded annually to select people who have made outstanding cultural contributions. This distinction is intended to play a role as a part of a system of support measures for the promotion of ...

in 1958. Wada died of aspiration pneumonia on August 22, 1967 at the Tokyo Teishin Hospital at the age of 84.

''A Dictionary of Color Combinations''

Between 1933 and 1934, Sanzo Wada published 6-volumes of color studies called ''Haishoku Soukan'' (配色辞典), documenting over a thousand color combinations. The books were intended to capture traditional Japanese perceptions of color, which differed from Western approaches, and included a wide range of subtle shades and hues. In 2011, Seigensha published ''A Dictionary of Color Combinations'', a book based on Wada’s original 6-volume work, containing 348 color combinations.

Bibliography

* ''A Dictionary of Color Combinations'' (2011) * ''A Dictionary of Color Combinations, Volume II'' (2020)

References

External links

*
An online version of ''A Dictionary of Color Combinations''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wada, Sanzo 1883 births 1967 deaths 20th-century Japanese painters Best Costume Design Academy Award winners Japanese costume designers Tokyo University of the Arts alumni