Musashino Works: A Small Perfume Workshop and the Scent of Japan’s Four Seasons

“The perfumes we aim to create are, if anything, nostalgic scents. They belong closely to daily life and mingle with it: the smell of cooking, of wood indoors, of soil in the garden, and the lively scent of family. We create and offer perfumes that harmonise with these everyday smells and add colour to life.”
— Tomoko Harada, Representative of Musashino Works

Essential Information

Founded: March 1996 as a sole proprietorship; incorporated as a yūgen kaisha limited company in August 1996; changed to a kabushiki kaisha stock company in November 2023

Founder: Tomoko Harada

Official website: https://www.fragrance.co.jp/

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

From Graduate School at Keio University to Reuters: A Very Different Beginning

After completing her master’s degree at Keio University in 1989, Tomoko Harada joined the marketing department of Reuters Japan. Working in financial information laid the foundations for her later entrepreneurial outlook and international business experience. At the time, her career was far removed from perfume and fragrance.

A major turning point came in 1995. She qualified as a fragrance designer at Kaori no Gakkō, the Miya Fragrance School founded by Miya Hirao, and was certified as an instructor there. The following year, in 1996, Harada founded Musashino Works while continuing to teach at cultural centres, vocational schools, and companies.

From Musashino to the New Sales Channel of the Internet

Musashino Works began as a sole proprietorship in March 1996. It was incorporated as a limited company that August and began providing original perfumes and OEM contract-manufacturing services for corporate clients. It was also around this time that the company became an early adopter of online mail-order sales for original perfumes.

Harada’s work as a fragrance designer flourished soon after the company was established. In 1997, she designed a scent for the stage production Cleopatra, starring Mao Daichi. In 1998, she created Sawau, an original fragrance for the Ginga Kogen Hotel. The company also developed international connections, including an agency agreement with the German software company BROKAT in 1998.

A Growing OEM Business and a Turning Point

The company’s record of OEM fragrance creation expanded further in the 2000s. In 2000, it designed Mister No.3, “the scent of Giants manager Nagashima,” a project organised by Nippon Broadcasting System. Collaborations with museums and cultural institutions followed, including Rinpa no Nagare, the scent for the Rinpa exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in 2003, and scents inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies and Van Gogh’s Roses for the National Museum of Western Art in 2004. That same year, the company also worked on T3, “the scent of The Trilogy Diamond,” for a Mitsukoshi project.

Collaborations with comics and screen-based works were another distinctive aspect of the company’s activity. In 2006, it created fragrances for the Hana to Yume Comics titles Otomen, Sora-iro Kaigan, and Velvet Blue Rose, as well as Nitroplus’s Togainu no Chi and Toyota’s Blade. Musashino Works thus developed as a pioneer in bringing scent into a wide range of cultural contexts, from anime and games to cars and art exhibitions.

Focusing on Its Own Brand

Alongside these varied OEM projects and collaborations, the company released its own brand, Floral 4 Seasons, in October 2000. In 2004, it began selling through physical retailers, including Isetan Shinjuku. It subsequently ended both its corporate OEM perfume service and its bespoke perfume service for individuals. Today, its business focuses on developing and selling its own brands by mail order, with Floral 4 Seasons at the centre.

Since its founding in 1996, the company has moved its offices from Shinjuku to Kokubunji, Kunitachi, Kodaira, and back to Kokubunji, its current location in Tokyo. It has no physical store and generally sells only through its official online shop.

What Defines the Brand

A Philosophy of Perfumery Rooted in “Nostalgic Scents”

In a phrase, Musashino Works’ identity is the pursuit of “fragrances suited to Japan’s climate and landscape, and to Japanese skin.” The representative’s words on the official website capture this starting point well.

“When you unexpectedly encounter the scent of winter daphne on a street corner, it is not so much ‘a pleasant smell’ as the shock of ‘This is the scent!’ It is hard to explain. You are filled with the feeling, ‘Ah, this is the fragrance I was looking for,’ as if it had been inscribed in your DNA before you were born.”
— Tomoko Harada, Representative of Musashino Works

This desire for nostalgia is deeply connected to childhood memories. In the representative’s account on the official website, a late-autumn scene of straw piled high in the rice fields after the harvest remains etched in memory as an early encounter with scent. That memory connects directly with the brand’s direction: fragrances intimately bound to daily life.

Meanwhile, perfume usage in Japan amounts to only 2–3% when measured as a share of cosmetics overall, far below the roughly 20% reported for Europe and North America. Musashino Works has pursued a clear mission of offering “gentle, calm fragrances” to Japanese customers who find Western perfumes too strong.

Creating Fragrances Through Fieldwork

Musashino Works’ perfumers do not remain solely in the laboratory. They value the practice of taking bottles of fragrance materials into the hills and countryside to create scents in the field. With the beauty of Musashino’s woods as a starting point for creativity, composing fragrances while immersed in nature is a distinctive part of the brand’s approach.

Raw Materials: An Honest Coexistence of Natural and Synthetic

The company explicitly states that its policy is to use natural and synthetic fragrance materials together. Like wine, natural ingredients can vary in quality according to origin and year. As plant-derived natural ingredients often require large quantities of plants to obtain a small amount of extract, the company says it does not “make perfumes that rely excessively on natural ingredients alone.” It also makes clear that, as a rule, it does not use natural animal-derived fragrance ingredients obtained by killing or injuring animals.

For synthetic fragrance materials, the company tries whenever possible to choose substances that also occur in nature, or that break down after use and return to nature. This candid, transparent policy on raw materials is one factor that builds trust in the brand.

Bottles and Sizes

The range comes in three sizes: a 25 ml full bottle, a miniature 4 ml cube bottle, and a made-to-order 100 ml Grande. Designed as a “thumb-sized miniature perfume,” the 4 ml cube is popular with customers who cannot finish a full bottle or want to try a scent first. The blog also describes its small size and charming appearance as reasons for its popularity. Solid perfumes are offered as well, with fragrance products applied to the skin using bases such as petroleum jelly or cream.

The Product Collection

Among Japan’s approximately 2,000 cosmetics companies, Musashino Works is positioned as a rare specialist in perfume. Its current product range consists mainly of the following three lines.

Floral 4 Seasons

Released in 2000, this series forms the core of the company’s own brand. It is a collection of at least forty perfumes based on the concept of “focusing on Japanese floral scents that feel right for Japan’s climate and Japanese skin.” Created for people who find the fragrances of Western brands too strong, the series gives the highest priority to smelling gentle and unpretentious.

The leading fragrances in the popularity ranking published on the official website are Sandalwood / Byakudan 2019 in first place, Kinmokusei 2015 in second, Jinchoge in third, Jukai in fourth, and Robai in fifth. Creations inspired by flowering trees and plants characteristic of Japan occupy the top places. The wide-ranging collection also includes Helsinki Airport, Snow Mint, Peach, Gardenia, White Plum Blossom, Lotus Flower, Lily of the Valley, Jasmine, Wisteria, Violet, Peony, and Magnolia. Many fragrance concepts are tied to specific places or experiences, such as “inspiration from the air of Helsinki Airport, with an accord of coniferous forest and mint,” or “memories of Mount Poronupuri in Hokkaido, with the scents of lavender, cedarwood, and hinoki.”

Sleeping Mist

A natural-style fragrance series made primarily with natural fragrance ingredients, based on the concept of “a pleasant scent that makes you want to drift off to sleep.” Direct application to the skin is not recommended. The brand instead suggests uses for spaces and bedding, such as spraying pillowcases or tissues, adding it to bathwater, or scenting a face mask.

The names draw on phases of the moon and times of day. The poetic Japanese names include Fushimachizuki (cedarwood), Izayoi (lavender and sandalwood), Komochizuki (geranium), and Tasogarezuki (osmanthus and orange). The accessible price of ¥570 including tax for 4 ml also makes the series easy to try.

Bettaguard

A hand cream based on Sun White, a highly refined, high-purity petroleum jelly. Although part of the skincare range, it embodies Musashino Works’ meticulous approach to making products and has devoted users alongside the perfumes.

A Few More Details…

• Musashino Works once took on an unusually wide range of fragrance-design commissions. In 2001, it even developed “the scent of kusaya,” a pungent fermented fish, as a souvenir product for Niijima in Tokyo. Turning that powerful fermented-food smell into a product suggests an openness to requests, or perhaps a spirit of adventure.
• In 2003, the company even made a perfume for Epoch’s Sylvanian Families toys. A small perfume workshop in the Tokyo suburbs creating a fragrance for a toy brand with a world reminiscent of French dolls offers one vivid example of the many different contexts in which Musashino Works has delivered scent.