A gift from the sea

More than 1,400 years ago, a large piece of fragrant driftwood washed ashore on the small Japanese island of Awaji. The islanders, struck by the scent rising from the wood, presented it to the court of Empress Suiko. That log of precious agarwood — recorded in Japan's oldest chronicles around the year 595 — is where the Japanese art of incense begins.

From the Imperial Palace to the world

Eleven centuries later, in 1705, Rokubei Moritsune Hata started an incense shop in Kyoto. He had learned his craft working at the Imperial Palace, where incense was blended for the court alone — and he began offering that world of scent to everyone else. The shop became Shoyeido. It sent its first incense to America in 1897, supplied the Emperor's enthronement ceremony in 1928, and took an award at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933.

Blended by hand, still in Kyoto

Twelve generations on, the Hata family still blends in Kyoto. The recipes stay close: agarwood and sandalwood, cinnamon, clove, and other natural botanicals, ground and hand-blended — no synthetic shortcuts. In Japan there is a phrase for appreciating fine incense: you don't smell it, you listen to it. Light a stick, and you'll understand.

We carry both sides of their range — the everyday Daily line (Moss Garden and Kyoto Cherry Blossoms are the ones we reach for) and the Premium blends, where the rarest aromatics go.