Schedule

Our Palette

• Dark Chocolate 焦茶 Kogecha “Scorched tea” — one of the many browns of old Japanese architecture. + The story – The story

  Its name means something close to “scorched tea.” In the Edo period, ordinary people were largely limited to brown, grey and indigo, so browns multiplied into countless shades — the dark, warm wood you still see throughout old wooden houses.

• Deep Indigo 留紺 Tomekon Indigo at its deepest, from dipping the cloth again and again. + The story – The story

  Indigo deepens each time the cloth goes back into the vat, and tomekon sits near the darkest end of that range — the “stopping” shade, about as deep as it goes. Japan grew and fermented its own indigo for centuries, and a British chemist newly arrived in the 1870s, struck by how much of it he saw everywhere, called the colour “Japan Blue.” It's the same tradition behind Japanese denim — those regions were working with indigo long before anyone there made jeans.

• Wine 蘇芳 Suō One of Japan's oldest dye reds, long a colour of the court. + The story – The story

  It comes from sappanwood — a tree whose heartwood yields a rich red dye. Prized since antiquity, it carried a quiet sense of rank and refinement.

• The venue's own.

  Honey-Caramel 聚楽 Juraku A traditional Kyoto clay — the warm base tone of the venue, alongside its dark wood. + The story – The story

  This one belongs to the venue rather than to us. The name traces back to Jurakudai, a palace Toyotomi Hideyoshi built in Kyoto in the 1580s — the fine clay from that district became a prized plaster for traditional earthen walls, the warm, quiet finish you still find in tea rooms and old townhouses. Together with the dark wood, it's the base tone of the rooms we'll be in.