So sad...

I recently purchased a package of Shoyeido's kyara online from an incense shop in the US. Everything was hunky dory, and the product was as advertised. However, when I opened the box, I knew immediately that it was trouble. The entire box wreaked of incense. I opened the inner Shoyeido package hoping that it hadn't permeated the wrapping...but it had. The inner plastic bag that contained the precious wood smelled like incense, and the wood chips themselves smelled like it, too.
The kyara was ruined. It made me realize how important it is to store these precious woods carefully, away of strong smells. I had read somewhere to keep jinko away from sandalwood, as sandalwood's smell can transfer to jinko. When I was sampling Rakoku and Sumotara this summer at Yamadamatsu, a guy was having his old wood evaluated. He was being told that one of the woods had taken on a perfumy smell. Too bad.

Jinko is delicate. Remember, just like wine, if it's not stored correctly, it can be ruined!

A New Friend

My new friend Yanagi-san on the left; my good friend Akiko on the right

 I've been looking for someone to teach me kodo （香道）or the way of incense, but to no avail. There seems to be a lot of teachers of the way of tea, but not incense. Then, a good friend of mine met someone that teaches about incense that used to work for one of the largest incense makers in Japan. She even managed to arranged for me to meet him! A dream come true!!

I met Kenichi Yanagi on a Friday afternoon. Our conversation began with ousu ("weak" tea) that my friend served on the tatami mat. It was a great ice breaker and a very nice gesture. We listened to three different woods that I had: an old sasora from the Edo period, a kyara from Yamadamatsu, and a sumotara also from Yamadamatsu.

I asked him about how to distinguish the five different tastes, kan (sweet 甘,) san (sour 酸,) shin (hot or spicy 辛,) ku (bitter 苦,) and kan (salty 鹹.) Sweet is fairly easy to distinguish, and I finally think I understand sour and salty. Sasora was sweet with a touch of sour. The scent became a little bitter (I thought) as time passed, but was largely unchanged. Apparently, constancy is one of the things that is required of good quality.

Yanagi-san cut a tiny, tiny piece off and said that it's better to use very small pieces of wood to tell the quality of the wood. I thought this to be very interesting as we dilute essential oils and absolutes when we evaluate them. In fact, I work in dilution when I'm composing as I can tell the nuances better when the oils are highly diluted. Also, we were told that a venerable monk that names woods listens to the wood as he hold the burner on his lap. He says that "if the scent doesn't reach his nose, it's not worthy of being named."

Yanagi-san gives lectures on Japanese incense materials and on incenses mentioned in the Bible. No less than thirty scent materials are mentioned in the Bible, he told us. He goes to botanical gardens around the world to find these plants. He is having a hard time finding a live spikenard plant. If anyone knows where one can see it, please let me know!

Kyara II

My first impression of the third piece of wood was that it was yet another type, but because I had such a strong reaction to the first one, I wanted the third to be the same as the first, and I managed to find a similarity, a sweetness way in the back of the scent.

I marked my paper with the appropriate symbol, connecting the first and the third vertical lines with a horizontal line on top, meaning they were the same. 

Then came the answer. They were all different. My mother, a cooking teacher with a very keen nose had gotten it right. The young woman told us that the first one was kyara, second one was sumotara and the last one manaban. We were told that manaban is mistaken for kyara often. I should have stuck with my first instinct.

In Kodo (pronounced like kohdoh with long o's) the woods are classified into six categories (rikkoku) that represent six countries, kyara (伽羅) - Vietnam, rakoku (羅国) - Thailand, manaban (真南蛮) - Southwest India's Malabar area, manaka (真那伽) - Southwest Malaysia Malacca, sasora (佐曽羅) - unknown, and sumotara (寸門多羅) - Sumatra. While these names represent real places for the most part, the names are representations of types of wood. Hence it doesn't mean that all the jinko from Sumatra are sumotara or that all sumotara are from Sumatra. 

The scent of jinko is described using five characteristics called gomi (literal translation "five tastes".) They are hot 辛(karai) as in spicy hot like a clove, amai 甘(sweet) like honey, suppai 酸(sour) like pickled plums, nigai 苦(bitter) like herbal medicine, and shiokarai 鹹(salty) like the ocean and sweat.

Having been brought back to the real world, we walked through the garden and back into the shop. The shop was filled with wonderful treasures. I really had to restrain myself. I found a basket of sandalwood that were left over from making wooden beads. I smelled all the pieces and tried to pick one that smelled the best. Then I found another much smaller basket with jinko pieces left from making jinko beads. I started to smell these, too, but they were harder to smell. Jinko's scent is released with heat. I decided to choose one that was darkest. They also had some kodo utensils and cups, but I decided to pass on these as they would break the bank. I also thought I could substitute something for the time being, but you couldn't substitute the wood. I saw some kyara powder in small bags. They were being sold for ¥15,000 for a gram bag. At the exchange rate of ¥80 to the dollar that would be close to $190! 

Meanwhile the woman that had guided us through the kodo experience was serving us glasses of jinko tea. At the other end of the counter, I noticed another customer looking at some pieces of wood and incense. I summoned the nerve to ask the woman about the kyara we had listened to. She opened one of hundreds of drawers and pulled out a small plastic bag full of small pieces of wood. I chose one of the smallest piece and gave it to her. She weighed it; the scale flickered between 0.2 grams and 0.3 grams. She punched in some numbers into her calculator and came up with a price for the tiny piece of wood: ¥3,750. Roughly $48. It is now one of my dearest treasures.

I found this on YouTube that is a pretty accurate impression of the store Yamadamatsu.