Leaf incense - Kinmokusei | Kunjudo
Leaf incense - Kinmokusei | Kunjudo
POJ Studio
Yuzu is the citrus that shows up in Kyoto kitchens every winter - sharper than lemon, more fragrant than any orange, its whole peel dropped into a hot bath long before anyone thinks to cook with it. Kunjudo presses that same scent into a leaf of washi paper: bright and energetic, closer to the fruit itself than to any incense you'd expect from an old Awaji workshop.
Kunjudo hand-crafts each leaf on Awaji Island, where the Fukunaga family have made incense since 1893. Leave it out as a scented leaf for days before lighting it; once lit, the fragrance holds for close to an hour. Five leaves to a pack, with a non-flammable mat, wrapped without plastic.
Hand-crafted on Awaji Island by Kunjudo.
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About the maker
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.
