Along with glorious statues, ritual objects and religious texts and scholarship, incense arrived in Japan with Buddhism in the sixth century. Incense experienced in temples during Buddhist ceremonies must have inspired Japanese (who could afford it) to burn incense in their homes, not only to commemorate ancestors, deities and important life (and death) events, but to show they were sophisticated. Houses were scented, clothes were hung in ways and places to absorb incense aromas, hair was perfumed. Over the centuries lighthearted ways to enjoy incense were developed: the incense ceremony (kodo) and incense games (one of the most famous, Genji-ko, was associated with the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji).

Japanese incense blends changed over time, from complex mixes of ingredients formed into a variety of shapes to “purer” enjoyment of prized, rare, exorbitantly priced wood chips. Raw materials used for incense included shells, figwort, clove, benzoin, cinnamon, star anise, machilus (a member of the laurel family). The royalty of incense ingredients (enjoyed singly, too) were sandalwood and varieties of Aquilaria…

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