THE SMELL OF JAPAN— HOW THE NATIONAL SCENTSCAPE IS CHANGING : : featuring MAKE ME HAPPY SO WHITE (2026) : DIPTYQUE ORPHEON (2026)

Over the last three decades, Japan has massively come round to fragrance and perfume. I say that with a caveat: trains and buses are not generally filled with the noxious tropes of the western scent model – when you do smell those clobberheads and turn around it will inevitably be a gaijin giving off that particular aroma and they have never been nor will ever be internalized here as the standard scent model, they are just too……….brutal; vulgar; as subtle as anvils. Having said that, I was surprised to be sitting next to a young girl on the bus yesterday morning, a packed affair as yet another typhoon approaches and Tokyo has broken its record for the number of consecutive days of unremitting rain (34…..things are getting damp I tell you: it’s a really sodden affair), with the slowly creeping realization that oh my god yes, she is wearing an artificial oud; there is just a hint of that ‘woody amber’ in her base, clouded with a synthetic santal molecule or two, and wondered if I was…