Japanese Books Color Scheme

I was walking around the library doing my usual part-time job when something caught my eye. It was not ‘something,’ but a set of things. To be specific, a set of books. Whenever I walk past the Japanese section of the library stacks, the color consistency always catches my attention. To clarify, these books weren’t bright. They didn’t have interesting illustrations. They were plain. They had deep colors. But somehow they all fit together to create a beautiful mosaic, turning each side of the shelves into a painting of pale colors. The collection was soothing to the eye and in the twilight between the shadows and the stacks’ fluorescent lights, its beauty was sublime. Or maybe I'm just exaggerating here. Maybe they're just a bunch of vintage-looking books.

But here is why I think they do stand out. The other sections of the stacks are made of diverse colors that don’t match each other. While the Japanese books collectively hold on to each other, books from other sections wage war on each other to be the most attractive. In the end, what remained was messy and ugly as if someone threw buckets of paint on the shelves. The Japanese row is consistent in tone and of moderate contrast. The shiny but weathered golden letterheads stick out from their coarse covers. It’s hard for me to explain in words, so I took some pictures and investigated its aesthetics myself:

Using the photos I took, I went into Adobe Illustrator and used the eyedropper tool to pick out the colors to match the shelves. I realized that it doesn’t matter which book I picked from the shelf, the overall color scheme would have reached the same tone. I even had Adobe pick out random colors but they still matched each other. The result is a contrast between cool and warm colors that are kept together by a magical tone.

It’s hard to think that this is all by chance. I know I am stretching this, but is it perhaps because of the Japanese ideal of collectivism: individuals should sacrifice for the harmony of the group? While individually, a single book is plain to look at, but together, they create a beautiful looking ecosystem. When I have some more time, I want to investigate this further. But maybe I really am thinking too hard.