What perfume to buy in Tokyo

EDIT(h) is the perfume house of Moriyama, the company behind Nikko Seal, a red seal ink maker founded in Surugadai, Tokyo in 1905. Sixth-generation head Kentaro Kuzuwa, a former music industry director, noticed that seal ink and perfume share many aromatic materials and turned them into perfumes. It has its own shop in Kagurazaka.

J-Scent was launched in 2017 by LUZ, a Tokyo perfume maker with its own lab in Tokyo and factories in Shizuoka and Saga. Its perfumes turn everyday Japanese smells into wearable scents, such as roasted green tea, ramune soda, a rainy day and a sumo wrestler's hair oil. Everything is designed and made in Japan.

Perfumer Daiki Yamane, who learned perfumery under Satori Osawa of Parfum Satori, founded LIBERTA Perfume in Tokyo in 2020. Its Nakameguro Lab Perfumery puts the perfumers' workspace and production room behind a big glass front. Its own collections use Japanese themes and materials, and visitors can have a perfume blended for them on the spot.

Perfumer Satori Osawa opened her salon in Tokyo in 2000 and began releasing her own Parfum Satori collection in 2003. She trained under a former Firmenich perfumer and builds her scents around Japanese tea ceremony, flower arranging and incense culture. In 2019 her perfumes entered the collection of the International Perfume Museum in Grasse.

Perfumer Chihiro Murai launched R fragrance in March 2017 after working as a perfumer for a fragrance company. She plans, develops and composes every scent herself, and filling and production are done in Japan. Several scents carry Japanese names, such as Tsujigahana and Ichigo Mujou.

Perfumer Hidenori Matsuno founded the company Kohshi in July 2010 after about ten years in fragrance sales and cosmetics. Everything from sourcing raw materials to blending and bottling is done at its own factory in Hadano, Kanagawa, near Tokyo. It sells more than 80 perfumes across its kilesa, L'Heritage and KOHSHI lines through its pallumer shops in Tokyo and Kyoto.