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One of the most important holidays of the year in Japan, New Year sees businesses close from January 1st through January 3rd, allowing people to gather and spend time with their families. As such, January 1st is considered auspicious, and great care is taken to ensure the rest of the day is filled with joy, peace, and harmony, setting a tone free of stress and anger for the new year to come. Incense is deeply tied to New Year celebrations. Kaori-zome (香初め, First Incense) is a traditional Japanese New Year's custom of burning incense at home on New Year's Day. Stemming from the custom of gifting incense associated with luck dating back to the Heian Period (794-1195), First Incense is burned to create an auspicious beginning to the new year, attracting good fortune, health, and happiness for the family. Traditionally woods such as aloeswood are favored due to the mysterious and auspicious nature of its fragrance. Kokando's Kunpūshi Aloeswood is just such an aloeswood incense, perfect for use in both New Year celebrations or listening during the snowy months of winter.
Described as an elegant earthy fragrance, Kunpūshi Aloeswood highlights the clear fragrance of specially selected sinking-grade aloeswood. Part of Kokando's pair of Kunpūshi (薫風使 Fragrant Breeze Messenger) fragrances that include both aloeswood and sandalwood, Kunpūshi Aloeswood combines high-quality aloeswood with a skillful blend of traditional aromatics such as musk and camphor, the aim of which is to enhance aloeswood's natural fragrance. A traditional blend, Kunpūshi Aloeswood is an incense of great depth and character that emphasizes aloeswood's auspicious nature, perfectly suited for a harmonious family gathering.
Kunpūshi Aloeswood's earthy brown stick is soft and lightly sweet. Notes of malt, clove, and molasses grudgingly present themselves faintly giving a caramel-like warmth to the unlit stick. A rich spiciness also mingles quietly with this warm sweetness, lending it an added bright and lively quality. However, the stick is largely quiet without flame, the previous notes only apparent while looking for them.
Alight Kunpūshi Aloeswood begins with sharp bitter tones full of earthy weight colored with sour acidity. Rich dark roast coffee notes build, filled in with this light sour overtone, more rounding off the edges of the bitter notes than souring it overtly. As the stick warms, the sweetness of the unlit stick presents itself like mixing cream into coffee. Bitter and sweet tones temper one another, notes of caramel and brown sugar blending seamlessly with the sharp coffee tones to create a hybrid that is warm and rich.
Mingled within Kunpūshi Aloeswood's rich bitter tones, this sweetness brings out a greater range of notes than the dark roast that dominated its beginnings. Carmalized sweet tones mixed with dark chocolate peak from beneath the coffee notes like hints of kindness behind the gruff uncle the little kids are afraid of. Hints of cinnamon and clove whisper from the background, adding a spiciness to the sweetness like the sharp tongued quick witted aunt rebuffing her siblings. A warm woody sweetness simmers beneath it all, like the afterglow of the holiday meal in the family dinning room, guests chatting around the table.
Over time the sweet fragrance of Kunpūshi Aloeswood develops a savory quality as the select aloeswood at its base warms completely within the fragrant mix. Lightly alkaline and passive, the tang of salt is added in a pinch here, a pinch there, like the barbed good natured humor sprinkled in the after dinner conversation. Taken together, notes of turpentine and leather develop from this mix as well, adding a well worn depth to its sweetness, creating a fragrance that is clean, crisp, and alive with warmth. The result is another layer to Kunpūshi Aloeswood's profile, balancing its spicy sweetness with a savory element that in turn complements its darker roast bitter qualities.
Kunpūshi Aloeswood's afternote turn sharply darker, richer, and earthy. Notes of rich dark roast fill the space mingled with a more pronounced salty overtone mixed with a caramelized dark chocolate. The salty note, restrain during the burn, surges to the fore of the fragrance, giving Kunpūshi Aloeswood a rich sea side caramel mocha presentation that is far reaching, even long after the stick is consumed. Taken together, Kunpūshi Aloeswood's after note is wonderfully addicting, long lasting, and far reaching, coloring the space it filled with a warm afterglow that is enjoyable and pleasurable to return to.
Combining a mellow sweetness and a light spiciness over an aloeswood base filled with rich dark bitterness and savory notes, Kunpūshi Aloeswood showcases the natural, clear, and auspicious fragrance of fine sinking grade aloeswood perfect for an auspicious start to the New Year.
Dinner table resplendent in afterglow,
fragrance of coffee and desert lingering,
winter's snow fills the windows with peace.
Kokandao Kunpūshi Aloeswood is available in the following size:
200 Stick Box
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Learn more about the role of incense use in Japanese culture in the book: The Fragrant Path: A Guide to the Japanese Art of Incense. Filled with practical suggestions, useful tips, and an exploration of the history, selection, use, and appreciation of this uniquely Japanese art form, The Fragrant Path offers a rare, comprehensive look into the Japanese art of incense in the first in-depth English-language book on the subject in nearly three decades.
