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23 June, 2003
The Original Aromatherapy
When I think of incense, two entirely different images come to mind.
 Visitors to Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, an area in Tokyo, wave the smoke from a gigantic incense burner over themselves for purification. (Photo by Jeff Laitila, courtesy of his very fine Web site, Sushicam.com. He' an American living in Japan, and you can click the link or photo to visit his site and enjoy his essays, photographs and videos.) |
The first is the incense I grew up with as a child in Japan, the kind that made my grandmother's house in Hokkaido smell a certain mixture of sweet and musty. The second is the much more pungent, perfumey odor that I came to know in college, of patchouli and musk. Both trigger very vivid memories.
On one level, incense during my college years represented my generation's need to get in touch with Asian culture - thanks to the hippies of the 1960s and the Beatles introducing the world to Indian music and transcendental meditation. At the same time, even though that interest in Asia may have been genuine, the burning of incense wasn't necessarily part of any Buddhist ritual. The strong smell of the incense was used by young people to cover up the smell of pot in dorm rooms, apartments and rooms at home.
Incense was part of a lifestyle and a rite of passage for growing up, not just cultural tradition.
But the incense I grew up with has much deeper roots. It's the smell I associate with Japanese homes and temples. It's used in the respectful ritual called oshoko, or the burning of a pinch of incense, during a Buddhist ceremony. It's used by visitors to temples like the one at Asakusa in Tokyo, where you wave the smoke from a giant outdoor cauldron over yourself for purification.
It's an indescribably old smell - like it's been in the wood beams on the walls and ceilings and the fibers of the tatami mats on the floor for not just decades but for centuries. It's the smoke that seasons the slower, contemplative side of Japanese culture.
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And, incense in Japan doesn't smell like the stuff that's used to cover up the smell of spilled bongwater in dorm rooms. It's available in some frou-frou fragrances such as "rose" or even "patchouli," but it's subtler, and doesn't come dipped on a stick that adds the smell of burning wood to the experience. The Japanese incense I grew up with comes formed in thin sticks or sometimes in cones, and the main color I remember is green. In fact, my overwhelming memory of the smell of incense is that it was, well, green. A musty, woody, mossy green fragrance.
They say that smell is the most powerful of all our senses - probably because way back in our prehistory, we used our sense of smell to alert us to danger, or to food, much the way wild animals still do today. Binney & Smith, the company that manufactured both Silly Putty and Crayola Crayons once did a survey and found that adult Americans found that Crayolas were one of the 20 most instantly identifiable odors. The top two were coffee and peanut butter. Somewhere in that top 20, for me, would be incense.
The other kind of incense I remember from my childhood, especially on hot muggy nights, was a green coil of incense called "katori senko," a mosquito repellant that we unwrapped and perched on a little included disposable stand. It looked like a tiny green electric stove burner, floating half an inch off the table. I can't say for sure whether it worked any better than citronella candles, which don't work at all, but I remember vividly the slightly acrid smell of the stuff, and the fascination of watching the lazy, bug-fighting smoke curl up towards the ceiling and spread through the room, and the dull red glow worm its way in circles until I was asleep. (A quick search of the Internet finds that katori senko has some scientific basis for how it works, and is popular now all over Asia and Latin America.)
I've been burning a lot of incense this week, because I was fortunate enough to get an assignment from the Boulder Daily Camera to write a business article about Shoyeido, a Kyoto-based incense maker that has its North American headquarters in a nondescript warehouse in east Boulder.
Shoyeido is a well-known brand in Japan. The company was founded by Rokubei Moritsune Hata in 1705 and is now run by the 12th generation of his family, creating a variety of fragrances by mixing some basic ingredients - myrrh, star anise, cinnamon, frankincense, patchouli, sandalwood and aloeswood among them - into various combinations. All of the company's incense is still manufactured in Japan, either mass-produced in a factory or meticulously created by hand, and all to secret family recipes.
The Boulder office handles all the U.S. and Canadian distribution and marketing of Shoyeido's incense, including repackaging the Japanese imports to suit Western consumers' tastes.
Sometimes, all it takes is a catchy English name for a fragrance, although the Boulder office's operations manager, a nice guy named Jeff Banach, says translations can be tricky. He recalls one time when his Japanese counterparts suggested "protection" as a name for one fragrance, but he demurred, explaining that the word here conjures up images of condoms and safe sex.
Sometimes with the input of the Boulder staff (there is only one Japanese currently working there, the senior vice president, Yuji Matsumura), the Japanese plant creates customized lines of fragrances for the American market. You can tell there's a Western consumer in mind for a line of incense with the name "The Angelic Series," with individual scents such as "Inspiration," "Peace," "Joy" and "Love."
The Japanese are much more, well, Japanese, opting for names like "En-mei" ("Circle") or "Haku-un" ("White Cloud").
Banach estimates Shoyeido burned through 30 million sticks of incense in the U.S. last year, and adds the company's best retailer is a three-store chain in San Francisco called Asakichi, which has its main shop in Japantown. I've spent some time - and money - in Asakichi and found it ironic that I could have purchased incense there that came from Boulder.
Shoyeido's serious about its tradition as one of Japan's most venerable incense suppliers. Along with its mass-produced lines of incense, which can cost as little as $2.50 for a bundle of 40 sticks, you can buy a premium, hand-made bundle of 35 sticks… for a mere $500.
As much as I like having my house smell like my grandmother's in Hokkaido, I'd rather spend that kind of money towards a plane ticket to Japan.
You can learn about Shoyeido and order their incense online at www.shoyeido.com. Here's my Boulder Daily Camera article about Shoyeido.