5W1H: Fragrances Inspired by Plants, Minerals, and Individuality

I want fragrance to be part of someone’s individuality, like a talisman that helps them be themselves.
Mayumi Nakada

5W1H is a Japanese fragrance house founded by Mayumi Nakada in 2019. Its starting point was not perfume, but handmade candles. Having created spaces with fragrance and light, Nakada gradually came to think of scent as a tool that could accompany each person’s individuality.

Her journey encompasses clothing retail, candle making, selling a company, and starting again. From designing things that can be seen to styling invisible fragrances: to understand 5W1H, it is worth first tracing what Nakada wanted to create.

Contents

Key Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
The Brand’s Commitments
An Aside…
References

Key Information

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

From Clothing Retail to Candles of Fragrance and Light

Nakada was born in Tokyo in 1976. After studying clothing at junior college, she joined Onward Kashiyama and worked in department-store sales. Yet she wanted to make things herself. She turned toward a form of expression other than making clothes.

I arrived at candles through wanting to create spaces with fragrance and light.
Mayumi Nakada, on the time when she began making candles

In March 1998, Nakada founded SWATi and began making handmade candles. Initially, she continued creating them while working part-time. As multi-brand boutiques grew in number, more stores began carrying her candles.

Deeper Fragrance Research Through a Series Created in 2004

In the summer of 2004, SWATi’s UN DOUZE (1/12) became a hit. The series explored subjects such as birthstones, twelve women, sweets, and zodiac signs. For Nakada, it also prompted a serious engagement with fragrance.

I pursued fragrance and engaged with it directly.
Mayumi Nakada, recalling her SWATi years, April 2026

Discussing creative work with the staff every day, making candles, researching the market. Looking back, Nakada says she may have learned even more then than during her student years. Creation and research overlapped in her daily work.

In 2008, she established SWATi Co., Ltd. The business expanded to locations including Isetan Shinjuku and Shinjuku Lumine, eventually reaching six stores nationwide. Work that had begun with small-scale handmaking had grown into a brand with its own stores.

Selling the Company and Founding 5W1H in 2019

In December 2016, Nakada sold SWATi and stepped down as its representative, while continuing to work with it as a director. As she learned about management through this transition, her interest in fragrance remained. She wanted to work more personally, closer to people. That desire led her to study fragrance seriously once again.

In April 2019, she left SWATi after twenty-one years of involvement. That same year, she launched 5W1H as a place to express her own creative work. After the sale, she studied again under a perfumer, seeking to make fragrances with stories that could be told over time, rather than relying on visual design alone.

What I do is invisible, but I think this work is also close to that of a stylist.
Mayumi Nakada, on her work at 5W1H

Nakada engages with a person’s character, feelings, and wishes, which cannot be fully understood from appearance alone. She creates scent motifs and styles them, helping people to know themselves. What distinguishes 5W1H is that it begins by considering the relationship between people and fragrance, rather than simply handing over perfume as a finished product.

Connecting Personal Perfume Creation with Fragrances for Companies

Nakada’s work is not confined to her own brand. As a fragrance evaluator connecting businesses with fragrance companies, she also works on scent design and direction for other companies. Her role is to evaluate fragrances and link developers with brands. Her work as a creator sits alongside the work of considering the expression another party wants.

In workshops, meanwhile, she creates fragrances by working with each person individually. By 2024, her experience of creating personal fragrances extended to more than 6,000 people. She has combined both kinds of work: supporting a company’s expression and thinking about a scent for the person in front of her.

The Brand’s Commitments

Expressing Individuality Through Five Ws and Humor

The five words that 5W1H currently presents are WAKE (awaken), WISH (wish and desire), WALK (move forward), WILL (with intention), and WISDOM (gain wisdom). To these it adds HUMOR (do not forget humor). They are words for turning toward one’s own sensibility and expressing it freely.

An original chart also provides an entry point for fragrance recommendations. It gives people who do not know which scents they like, or who want to try a new fragrance, an opportunity to consider their own sensibilities. Nakada’s approach of looking inward at the individual appears in the selection of fragrance, too.

The eaux de parfum numbered 01 to 10 take minerals, sansho, fruit, earth, plants, rain, planets, wood, and water as their subjects. A discovery set containing 3 mL of each of the ten fragrances invites wearers not only to try them, but also to layer several scents to suit their individuality. Choosing a creation and deciding how to combine it with others are both left to the wearer.

Bringing Out Sansho’s Bitterness, Then Blending It with Wood and Citrus

02 MOUNT offers a concrete example of how a natural subject becomes a fragrance. Subtitled “I Am Sansho,” it is a woody citrus composition centered on the bitterness of Japanese pepper.

Grapefruit and citronella bring out that bitterness. As the sansho impression softens, its spiciness rounds out and blends with wood and citrus. The fragrance moves from an opening that emphasizes bitterness to a later stage that integrates it with the surrounding scents.

The top notes are satsuma mandarin, lime, and grapefruit. Sansho, citronella, petitgrain, and maté tea occupy the middle, over a base of woody accord, leather, and rose-woody notes. The composition moves from highlighting sansho to blending it into wood and citrus. Bitterness is the chosen characteristic of the plant, with the fragrance shaping both its emergence and its settling.

Five Fragrances Connecting Minerals with the Inner Self

The Mineral Collection, “Mineral Collecting,” launched on October 16, 2024, as a limited-edition set of five 10 mL fragrances connecting the five Ws with minerals. It is a separate project from 01 MINERAL in the numbered series. Agate corresponds to WAKE and instinct; pyrite to WALK and thought; garnet to WILL and the heart; lapis lazuli to WISH and emotion; and aquamarine to WISDOM and memory.

Agate depicts awakened curiosity through the green character of green tea and the tartness of raspberry. Pyrite connects a metallic gleam with the accumulation of thought, layering spices, dried flowers, tobacco, and leather over a woody foundation. A light opening and a more structured scent give different aspects of the inner self olfactory form.

Garnet links a bouquet of roses with the image of a talisman that stays close to the heart. Lapis lazuli concerns the sharing of emotions, while aquamarine addresses experience remaining as memory. The collection moves from instinct and thought through the heart and emotion to memory, pairing mineral names and colors with words that invite wearers to consider themselves.

In VOL.2, released in 2025, this interest in the inner self expanded into five landscapes. Tiger’s eye depicts instinct as a forest; azurite depicts thought as a lake; amazonite depicts the heart as a spring; pink opal depicts emotion as a flower garden; and petrified wood depicts memory as a stone corridor.

For example, tiger’s eye matches the earthy impression of vetiver and the sharpness of pepper to a story of instinct and action. Petrified wood combines cedarwood evoking old trees with myrrh and elemi to express accumulated time. The sequel retells the same five inner themes through different stones and landscapes. The meanings assigned to the stones are stories used to describe the fragrances.

At an Isetan Shinjuku event in August 2026, customer feedback led to a set allowing shoppers to choose five favorites from the ten fragrances in the original collection and VOL.2. A collection initially presenting the five Ws as one group became, for this event, a set that wearers could assemble themselves. The way it was sold reflected the brand’s concern for individuality.

VOL.3 launched on ISETAN BEAUTY online on October 7 of the same year. Nakada’s own hobby of mineral collecting also lies behind the project. The third installment contains Angel Feather Fluorite, Oil Quartz, Amber, Sapphire, and Rutilated Quartz, continuing the exploration of translating minerals into scent.

A Tea Collection Connecting Travel Memories with Imagined Landscapes

Illusia Voyage, announced in August 2025, follows landscapes and memories through fragrance, with tea as its starting point. Its first set, The Imaginary Atlas, consists of three 10 mL eaux de parfum inspired by Moroccan mint tea, Hong Kong jasmine tea, and Istanbul chai.

Desert Mint draws on time Nakada spent in Paris. She recalls a period when she visited the hammam at the Grande Mosquée de Paris with an acquaintance and enjoyed Moroccan-style mint tea afterward. The atmosphere of the building, the refreshed feeling after bathing, and the scent of mint all belong to that memory. She introduces Desert Mint in the essay recounting this experience.

The fragrance itself takes place around a cup of tea in a desert oasis. A real memory of drinking tea in Paris overlaps with an imagined landscape entrusted to the perfume. Its notes include bergamot, peppermint, shiso, chamomile, spearmint, and musk. The place and time in which tea is drunk, as well as the tea itself, support the fragrance’s story.

Wispers of Kowloon, in the same set, connects Hong Kong rain and jasmine tea with a harbor city in morning mist. Wispers is an invented word for a small voice heard only by the traveler within a fantasy, a voice that guides the journey. Midnight in Istanbul creates a nighttime scene through bazaar spices and chai. Places and drinks together convey the time and atmosphere of travel, as well as differences between teas.

The second set, The Imaginary Atlas Ⅱ, expands the journey to Thai tea in Bangkok, peach oolong tea in Taipei, and flower tea in Paris. The first set’s fragrances are also available as candles. Perfumes worn on the skin and candles lit in a room offer these tea landscapes through different kinds of products.

Choosing States of Mind and Layering Fragrances

The body-fragrance collection previewed at Isetan Shinjuku in August 2026 translates eleven words, including origin, wisdom, love, and focus, into scent. It was initially announced as “11 Words / Brain Chemistry.” Since its online launch on September 1, it has been presented as “11states of Mind -Inspired by Brain Chemistry-”.

Names such as serotonin and dopamine accompany individual creations, using brain chemistry as a creative subject. These names describe fragrance stories, not ingredients or effects that increase or decrease neurotransmitters. For example, 0 Origin connects twenty kinds of musk with a theme of quiet reassurance.

The collection consists of 50 mL body fragrances. Wearers are invited to layer them with one another, with the numbered 01–10 eaux de parfum, or with perfumes they already own. Having explored the inner self through plants and stones, 5W1H now places states of mind in the names of its creations, allowing wearers to choose and combine them according to how they feel that day.

Simple Bottle Design That Keeps Fragrance Close at Hand

Wanting fragrance to feel more familiar and unobtrusive, 5W1H chooses designs stripped of unnecessary elements. MOUNT’s bottle, too, pairs a wide, clear-glass form with softened corners and a wood-grain cap. The lettering and shapes on the front are restrained, leaving space around the liquid and glass.

Choosing simplicity as a way to place fragrance in everyday life. The brand’s design considers not just visual presence, but also the distance between a fragrance and the person using it.

An Aside…

Nakada also collects visual materials to communicate her fragrance ideas. She draws sketches while imagining a scent and uses images in proposals and presentations. Even in the work of communicating invisible fragrances, visible clues support the creative process.