Collection: POJ Studio

In 595 AD, driftwood washed up on Awaji Island and someone burned it. The fragrant smoke made it into the Nihon Shoki as Japan's first recorded incense. The island's warm climate and sea breeze proved ideal for drying the raw material - incense-making's most essential step. Awaji has been Japan's incense country ever since.

Kunjudo has worked the island since 1893, when the Fukunaga family opened as Fukunaga Senko Store. The family still runs it. Kunjudo now produces more incense sticks by volume than any other workshop in the country, and in 1975 developed the world's first low-smoke incense - without retiring the older, smokier methods connoisseurs still request by name.

POJ Studio, a Kyoto-based studio built on relationships with Japan's artisans, brought Kunjudo's incense to The Leopard, and continues to work with the Fukunaga family on new formats. Between them: the Sen and Uzumaki stick incense, hand-rolled in the Awaji workshop, and the Leaf Incense, pressed into washi paper that holds its scent for days as a fragrant bookmark before it's ever lit.