Book Information
Title: Atarashii Kōsui no Kyōkasho (The New Perfume Textbook; English rendering of the Japanese title)
Supervision: Yoshie Koiso
Publication date: June 30, 2022
Publisher: Mynavi
Book Review
First, this book was published by Mynavi Publishing, a company established in 2015 with the aim of “providing information and knowledge that people need, even if only a small number of people need it.” It is the company’s second book on perfume. The first was Kōsui Zukan (The Perfume Encyclopedia), written by Mynavi’s editorial department. This second book is supervised by Yoshie Koiso, a trainer at Bluebell Japan, which operates L’Atelier des Parfums fragrance counters in department stores and other locations. In other words, Koiso is not the author, so rather than a book reflecting Koiso’s own knowledge and experience, I see it as a book that neatly brings together general information about perfume, with an occasional comment from Koiso: precisely the kind of book the word textbook describes. However, I cannot tell where the “new” or “cutting-edge trends” come in, so I wonder whether simply calling it a textbook would have been better.
As for the contents, they far exceeded my expectations. I think this is probably the most readable textbook among books published in Japanese that are available to buy, while also offering a comprehensive grounding in fragrance as a whole. In just under 220 pages, basic knowledge, ways to choose and enjoy fragrance, and explanations of fragrance materials each take up roughly 30%, so it is packed with content. Every L’Atelier des Parfums salesperson ought to read it. In the future, sales staff may even have to serve customers on the assumption that they already know this much. That is quite a lot of pressure.
What disappoints me is how little of it is distinctive to Bluebell Japan. That may not be the book’s purpose, but I feel it has ended up being “a book that collects information you could find if you looked” (not that I am in any position to criticize others). That is useful in its own way, but it would have been wonderful to have the kind of professional perspective found in the books by Yumi Jibiki and Miya Shinma, or information gathered through the connections available to a major foreign-owned company like Bluebell. Even allowing for that, though, I can enthusiastically recommend it to perfume lovers as a textbook worth keeping a copy of.
If you are just beginning to enjoy perfume, have just started working in fragrance sales, or want to read a book about perfume but have no idea where to begin, try this book first. If you finish it and want to know more, read Kōsui no Rekishi (The History of Perfume). Then, if you want to learn still more, try the individual articles on this site. I think these three steps could give you a remarkably comprehensive picture of the perfume industry as a whole.
