‘We both know that it was a girl
back in Bethlehem
And on that fateful day
when she was crucified
She wore Shiseido red’
sings Tori Amos on Boys For Pele, cementing once gain the iconic status of Shiseido in the western eye, its rarified, aloof and untouchable Franco-Japonicity.
And yet the Shiseido that we know way out west and the one I know here are really quite different. The gleaming, curved beauty of the feline Serge Lutens collaborations such as the groundbreaking and quite brilliant Feminité Du Bois, or the now almost mythical Nombre Noir, have almost nothing in common with the far more homey and almost pedestrian fare that one finds here on your local Shiseido counter: sweet, and outdated, aldehydic nothings such as More, the original old musty fresh Zen, or Mémoire; or the powdery, green and irisian Chanel N°I9 wannabe, Murasaki.
While the best of the standard contemporary lineup, available in every high street Shiseido store, is possibly Koto, a fresh floral chypre that has a certain very refined and patchouli-touched atmosphere, it is nothing compared to the criminally discontinued Inouï (which is perfection) or Kamakura, a beautiful rose perfume whose existence I would probably have doubted ( I can’t find any information about it anywhere), had I not myself physically decanted a little from a Japanese friend’s rare bottle.
The same thing goes for the perfume Concerto. You become inclined to believe that though you are holding a miniature of the scent physically in your hand, that there must be some mistake, that it can’t actually exist, as there seems to be no mention of it anywhere on the netosphere, that if it isn’t written about, somewhere, on the great cosmic spider’s web of information technology that dominates our universe that it is almost as though it had been redacted out of our collective consciousness and cannot be allowed to have ever been there in the first place. But there it is: again, a copy of a western perfume (this time, Jean Patou’s exquisite I000; nice, well crafted, intriguing).
Before I continue with this properly, and illustrate for you my amazing find of a rare, untouched cache of vintage miniature Shiseido extraits, I think I am going to first just pop out now with Duncan’s iphone around the corner and show you my local Shiseido. I think you are going to be surprised. Less than minute’s walk away from my house, the ‘Shiseido Chain Store’ as they are called here, is a zillion, zillion miles away from the glamour of a a Shiseido concession in a department store of Paris or of Tokyo, and is more, in fact, like a Boots or a Walgreens ( except in my local case it is a total endearing shambles: more Sally-Ann, than rigidly covetable cosmetique. The proprietor knits woollen frogs and tunics with ladies from the neighbourhood and puts them in the shop window (and her is the photographic evidence)
oh the glamour
, and you can buy anything there from expensive Shiseido cosmetics and perfumes (so artfully arranged!)
to pens to cellotape, washing powder and glue; cigarettes; magazines; candies, hairclips and medicines .
Let me go now, actually – and I will take along my box of long lost, ‘secret’ Shiseido parfums (one of my truly great ‘recycle’ finds of the last few months, an exhilarating find,) to see exactly what she makes of them.
Just look at the drab dowdiness of ‘my’ Shiseido! Are you not surprised?
As I expected, the Shiseido lady was with her Saturday late morning knitting companion. They sit there with the radio on and chew the cud on neighbourhood gossip, as Shiseido perfumes malinger on shelves and the whole feels rather more like somebody’s in-need-of-a-tidy-up kitchen. I got three boxes of laundry detergent, some toilet freshener and some headache pills, and then whipped out my box to see what she made of them. ‘Wow!’ she said, or the Japanese equivalent, and then, ‘natsukashi’i, which is one of my favourite words of the language actually, for its ease of use, and its concise encsapulation of much longer English expressions we use in these situations such as ‘God that takes me back’, or ‘Haven’t seen that for a long time’ or ‘Wow, that really reminds me of the long and drawn out summers of my junior high school days’. As I pulled out the draws with the tips of my nails (though I haven’t really got any in truth as I bite them) – this set certainly isn’t very ergonomic – the ladies broke up their knitting to come and have a peer, and how lovely it is: like a chocolate box with a guide map written to what is within, a selection: mmm………..what perfume shall we wear tonight?
White Rose is the first one she takes out of its felt indentation (each perfume fits snugly into its own), and in fact this also takes me back a few years or two because I vividly remember when I first moved to this neighbourhood – almost twenty years ago – there being a precious big bottle of the extrait of White Rose, a perfume I had never heard of before and was very excited to be discovering, under the counter: a very expensive, made to order, haute couture number that Princess Michiko, now Empress, apparently as she has just told me, wore on her wedding day. Of the collection, this is the one in fact that stands out, probably : transparent and pure – it is in fact the smell of a white rose , and I really like it. ‘Jasmine’ seems like a weirdity, somehow: ‘Shiseido Jasmine’, but it is also quite nice in a perfumey, aldehydic kind of way, a bit like something by Le Galion. Concerto is there, as is Mémoire, with its bathtime heliotrope softness, and the still available More.
More excitingly, however, there is Sylvia (what a great name), which one immediately of course hopes is an olfactory homage to Plath. It could be, who knows, though it certainly lacks her savage wit. The lady at the shop reckons this collection is probably thirty to forty years old or so though and it smells it: Sylvia is a nondescript, but sweet and pleasing woody aldehydic in the manner of Givenchy’s L’Interdit – but nothing to get your knickers in a twist over- while Prior (pronounced Pree-orr, according to the Japanese katakanization) is a dead ringer for vintage Miss Dior (in truth it does often seem that pre-Lutens, and with the exception of Inouï, blatant plagiarism was the order of the game for the perfumery division of Shiseido). Yet, like Koto, Prior is a very well made green chypre and has reall life to it: I can certainly imagine a I960’s well-kempt secretary clicking her heels along a pavement in Shimbashi, a touch of this latest perfume release by Shiseido gracing her neck and wrists, then when it has faded on her post-work skin, changing later into Tonight, described, if I am reading it correctly, as an enchanting and ‘relaxing muguet’ bouquet over sandalwood, and indeed it is (how nice to smell that genuine sandalwood again; still with integrity after all this time, like a genie from a lamp: you do sense that with a touch of Tonight (“Tonight, Tonight, It all began tonight. I saw you and the world went away”, god I love that song) she will be happy and perhaps let her hair down a bit; yes, you can imagine her going to a production of West Side Story at a theatre in Hibiya, snug in her Shiseido Tonight, happy in the economic brightness of the era she has brimmingly and luckily found herself in.
Primax, which now would be like calling a luxurious extrait Walmart, is yet another classical rose jasmine woody aldehyde (you would think that the only perfume ever invented in the history of humanity were Chanel N°5 sniffing this box), while Jyakko, on the other hand, is a more interesting and heady chypric white floral with slightly more lift.
No. In all honesty, while I was certainly thrilled to find this set, dusting away as it was at the back of a Yokohama antiques shop, because it is rare and probably extremely collectible (and I have already collected it), although I was hoping to torture and tantalize you drippingly with the exclusiveness of my acquisition, in truth the perfumes themselves, though pleasing, could never really be described as exciting. Only Deluxe, the final scent in this collection, has that extra, animalic, almost Bal A Versailles like heft and texture (actually, it is quite similar, though not quite as good (but then, what is?)), hinting, perhaps of that brief spell of gloriousness Shiseido was to have soon in the future, in the eighties, when the wizard from Marrakesh Monsieur Lutens melded the f philosophical chic of his art fashion brain with the grande dame reputability of Japan’s most highly held cosmetic conglomeration, and inspiringly opened the magnificent Les Salons Du Palais Royal Shiseido, that mesmerizing magnet of covetable elixirs that puts this anachronisitic little bunch rather in the shade.
And yet. How beautiful it is, nonetheless, to have found it. And to have had the opportunity to discover its contents, and share them with you here on The Black Narcissus today on this grey and cold October afternoon. A portal into another time; housed secretively and hermetically; in its drawer-like, jewellery collection box.
The Black Narcissus 
Wonderful post, especially with the photos of your local store! What fun to find this little treasure box. I still have a bottle of the 2000 Shisheido Zen, by Natalie Lorson, which I wore daily for a few years. The bottle is basically empty but I keep it so I can sniff it again once in a while, and because its sculptural white shape is so pleasing.
I have that one as well: the best of the Zens…
Such a shame that they discontinued it, although that’s probably what led to my discovery of it at some store like Marshall’s.
P.S. I just found your post on it and the incense ceremony; fabulous story!
Thank you. Yes, I really did enjoy writing that one I must say.
What a find! The Empress wore it on her wedding day???? That’s what I chose to wear when I got married to my partner on a cold December day in Boston. I chose it because I wanted something pure, something so unlike me. And something Japanese to commemorate that my partner (it’s still hard to call him my husband) and I met in Japan.
The Empress is so gracious. One time my partner (husband) were at the gate of the imperial Palace, the gate that has the office of the Household Agency that arranges tours to Katsura Rikyu and Shugaku-in, both in Kyoto. We were arranging our dates to visit and suddenly a call came in that the Empress’ motorcade was approaching the palace. I guess when that happens, staff must go outside to bow. We went out, too. The Empress saw us– two foreigners bowing deeply– and she instructed her driver to slow down. She waved to us. It was touching. Natsukashi!
What a beautiful story. I am no monarchist/royalist, but I have nothing against Elizabeth and she does a good, stolid, job. But she is not a patch on Empress Michiko for style and natural gracefulness.
I am impressed also, in a way, that you were also able to bow deeply. I am somehow physically and psychologically incapable of it.
As for White Rose, it is interesting how we feel identically about it. This is not a scent I would wear at all often, if ever, actually, but I can, as you say, completely imagine there being a day when it would be absolutely pitch perfect. That pure translucency that could be quite cleansing to the spirit. Did you buy a full bottle of the extrait when you were in Japan?
No, I couldn’t justify spending that much money on a rose fragrance, although I was tempted….the bottle is beautiful. I’m not sure if I can really get away with rose on my skin. I have tried with Noir de Noir, West Side, and Red Roses. I am intrigued by what I’ve read about Voleur de Roses and Acteur. It’s all samples and decants for me…. And they usually get used up on my bed sheets.
Voleur De Roses was one of my signature scent for a while in the nineties. None of the L’Artisan perfumes are quite what they were, but I still really like that one. It is, as you will know, a kind of patchouli plum rose thing, but there is something about the particular composition that makes it nothing like all the tedious current oudh roses, nor even anything patchouli-ish. Worth trying if you ask me.
Love this post! I am so enchanted by all things Shiseido, had a fabulous Shiseido shop in my town growing up; a very Asian suburb of Boston. I noticed a beautiful vintage bottle of Murasaki in one of your photos. Would love to get my hands on it, I adore Murasaki. I wonder how much it costs. Next time you are in the shop, would you be so kind to ask; I am curious as to how pricey it might be.
I would love to try the White Rose scent, especially seeing that the Empress wore it. It must be so lovely.
You should share more about Shiseido, I actually worked for them back in 1989 during the time they were transitioning to their more glamorous ideal. I always adored the company, but also always wanted to know more about what it is really like, not jut the posh High St. Version we are presented with here.
Just loved hearing about all those fabulous little scents.
I hoped you would like this post, and how fascinating that you once also worked for the company. I also find the contrast between the old Shiseido and then the Lutens remix very interesting, which is why I was so startled when I found this box (and sorry I can’t write about them in more detail; they just don’t sing to me enough to). Nevertheless, the sheer obscurity of a perfume called Shiseido Sylvia is strangely thrilling. I once bought Murasaki as well, but found that once I had it I much preferred No I9. Having said that, it does have its own unique fresh powdery aspect that makes it worth having. I’ll ask how much it is.
I thank you so much. I adore Shiseido and wish the scents you have were more memorable, yet as a time capsule like find they are priceless. I also used to own Inoui and that one was a real treasure. There was also another one named Saso which was also a glorious find. My favorite though was Murasaki, it was a scent my mother gave me as a jeune fille. I wore it for years till I could find it no more.
Wow! I am always awed by your finds…….
a world of secret treasures!
Reblogged this on The Black Narcissus.
Virtual travel for your readers, in time and space. I love the whole quotidian Japanese nature of everything here, fragrances included. Such a refreshing alternative to the images of a fastidious, hyper-slick and upscale Japan that I’m used to seeing. Thank you, thank you, Neil.
My dad brought me back a bottle of Murasaki after he was on sabbatical in Japan and I loved it as a teenager. Maybe that’s why I took to N°19 so easily a little later — although I tend to relate Murasaki to Silences a little more closely.
Just wonderful all around.
Thanks. After the rather cold and camphoraceous post yesterday, I fancied something a bit warmer- fluffy and aldehydic and a bit nicer about Japan!
You are right though: you usually only see the zen exquisite/ Tokyo futuristic side in other countries : I liked the idea of revealing a more banal, scruffy yet homely and friendly side of the place.
Zen exquisite/Tokyo futuristic side: that’s just what I wanted to say, but didn’t have the words. You always do. Please never stop writing for us — and for yourself.
You have plenty of all the right words.
I have read them!
I think that it is pretty cool that you found that little collection.
Yes, and now I don’t know what I have done with it! I was just looking for it but can’t locate the damn thing.
I want to reacquaint myself with them all again, one by one.
I had a bottle of Murasaki several years ago, but couldn’t quite get excited about it and ended up selling it. Would like to smell White Rose one of these days. Like Robin, I enjoyed seeing the dowdier, more homely side of Japan. I have spent time on a farm in the south of France and it is 180 degrees from the brilliant sparkling glamour one thinks of, because of course Paris is not France, just like Tokyo is not Japan.
Exactly. And this is my daily reality.
Found this while searching for Koto. I love your writing! I wrote a blog years ago that so few read so I gave up when I got busier.
Anyway, my question: There are bottles on eBay, but since Koto was discontinued, is it worth buying these old “vintage” ones? I read that perfumes “expire” after a few years so I imagine the ones being sold may not smell the same. I wore Koto in my late teens and early 20’s way back in the 70’s and wish I could have it again. Yes, and the same for Chanel no. 19. Which scents are similar to these two that are currently available?
Nothing is similar to a vintage perfume, which is why you have to go vintage! Koto should be very easy to get cheaply – give it a go.
Re: blogs and reader numbers – I know the feeling. Unless you are a ‘super influencer’ or whatever, it’s actually very hard to get your ‘stats’ up, so eventually you just have to do it for the joy of creation itself. The Black Narcissus will be ten years old next year but I still haven’t got a thousand ‘followers’. For me it is like my treasure chest, my diary – and I get a great deal of pleasure from it.