Simple pleasure

Kousaido are in Kyoto, on Karasuma street, where you turn in east at Bukkoji.

They describe what they are for in a single sentence: to take a little of the dryness out of a hurried life. Their own English phrase for it is simple pleasure, and a stick of incense is a modest enough thing to carry that.

Two other lines of theirs are worth having before you choose anything. Find the scent you like not with your nose alone, they say, but listening to the voice of your heart. And: it is not rare for a chance scent to bring an old memory back.

Fragrance has been understood this way in Japan for a very long time. Kousaido open their own catalogue not with a product but with a classical text, handed down since the Muromachi period, setting out what incense is held to do for a person. This is their wording, from their English edition.

Kousaido's own note underneath it: that they preserve the fragrance culture inherited from the ancient capital of Kyoto, and also make incense out of new ideas, to add colour and richness to daily life.

Sandalwood underneath

Kousaido call their own method the lavish way: a sandalwood base, with natural aromatics blended into it. The verb they use is neru, to knead, and it is the right one. The scent is not painted onto a stick. It goes through the whole of it.

What you notice when you light one is what is absent. Very little of the smell of smoke, and a fragrance that comes up softly instead of arriving all at once. They have a phrase for what that produces which is hard to improve on: interior decoration made of scent.

The lines

Hyakurakukou is the everyday range and the broadest of them. Long sticks on a generous sandalwood base, in cherry blossom, green tea, yuzu, rose, lavender, white sage, palo santo, frankincense and plain sandalwood. Every scent carries a single line of its own in the catalogue, and they read like captions to photographs nobody took. The lotus blooming upright. As if bathing in the air of the forest.

Kyoto Less Smoke and Kimiomou are two graded tiers, blended for rooms with the windows shut. Less Smoke is the everyday one: white plum, autumn leaves, cherry blossom, rose, green tea, coffee, and three larger boxes named simply for the moon, the sea and flowers. Kimiomou goes further again, and is the one to light in a bedroom.

All Natural is the purist's line, and the only place Kousaido make the claim outright: tree essential oil, wood flour and resin, nothing else, and no dye. The woods are named by where they grew. Kitayama cedar from the hills north of Kyoto. Hiba from Aomori. White camphor from Kyushu. Frankincense out of Oman, palo santo and copal from Peru.

Sanshisuimei borrows an old phrase for purple mountains and clear water, the two things that make Kyoto Kyoto. Each scent is a place at an hour. Saga no Asagiri is the morning mist at Saga, wetting the pale green bamboo. Kamo no Seseragi is the Kamo running shallow and bright. They arrive in paulownia boxes marked as respectfully made.

Waboku is hardly incense at all. No stick, no binder, nothing added. Solid slivers of hinoki, keyaki and kusunoki that you light and then let go out. What you get is the wood.

Hanga is the woodblock line, seasonal motifs on slim boxes with a scent blended to match each one, and it comes as a folio of ten.

What we carry

Deep, and on purpose. We bring these in as ranges rather than a token scent or two, so you can find one you like and stay inside it.

Hyakurakukou in nine scents, plus the twelve scent discovery set and a nine scent assortment. Kyoto Less Smoke in ten, plus a short assortment. Kimiomou in Akane and Shizuka, each in full size and in a six gram trial, which is the sensible way to start.

All Natural in five. Sense of Incense in sandalwood and Japanese cypress. Sanshisuimei in Saga no Asagiri and Kamo no Seseragi. Waboku in hinoki and as a three wood assortment. Sandalwood on its own, long, including the Rouzan Mysore. Cones in sandalwood, frankincense, palo santo and white sage, the sandalwood with its own holder.

Then the boxed sets, which Kousaido clearly build as gifts: Four Seasons, Shikisai in paulownia, the Hanga folio, Haisaibi, Seidou no Hana.

On choosing, their own advice runs by season. Florals and a fresh sandalwood in spring. Citrus and mint through the summer. The woods and sandalwood in autumn. And in winter the deeper woods and herbs, for the months when a mood tends to sink.