Crazy Jasmine: Yoko Mukaida’s Journey and Fragrances Recreating Newly Opened Flowers

I want to enjoy this fragrance all year round!

Yoko Mukaida, on the scent of the jasmine Mukaida grows at home

Crazy Jasmine is a Japanese fragrance brand conceived by Yoko Mukaida, who worked on jasmine tea packaging at ITO EN. Its starting point was the jasmine Mukaida grew at home so that the designer could draw it. Seeking to understand the flower’s form, the designer was drawn to its freshly opened scent and began thinking about carrying that fragrance beyond its season.

Analyzing fresh flowers to recreate their scent; shifting the use from wooden bangles to perfume worn on skin; prioritizing the impression of the flower over changes in the fragrance. Each of these decisions considers what to offer people who love jasmine.

Key Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
What Defines the Brand
1. Choosing a Single Note to Preserve the Scent of a Newly Opened Flower
2. Reflecting Differences in Flower Forms and Varieties Through Scent
References

Key Information

Brand business launched: 2023
Originator and brand founder: Yoko Mukaida
Country of origin: Japan
Operating company: Crazy Jasmine Tokyo Co., Ltd. (established on May 1, 2026, wholly owned by ITO EN)
Official website: Crazy Jasmine

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

From Tea Packaging Design to Growing Jasmine

Mukaida joined ITO EN mid-career in 2006 and worked on tea product design. Mukaida has been involved in the packaging of Relax JASMINE for 17 years. Even to draw the flower, the designer first needed to establish which jasmine was used in jasmine tea.

During the cold season when preparations for photography took place, fresh flowers were unavailable, so artificial flowers or illustrations were sometimes used. Wanting to know the flowers better, Mukaida gradually collected plants and began growing them at home. Mukaida came to notice not only their forms but also differences in scent among single, double, and rose-shaped blooms.

Jasmine sambac is the flower used to scent jasmine tea. In Japan, it blooms only during the hot season, but Mukaida wanted to enjoy its freshly opened scent all year round. Mukaida currently grows 14 varieties at home. Daily cultivation also provides a place for expanding the brand’s subjects.

Discovering Demand for Perfume at the Bangle Counter

Through ITO EN’s internal venture program, Mukaida proposed a shop specializing in jasmine. In 2023, Crazy Jasmine began operating as a business. Its first products were wooden bangles that could be impregnated with fragrance and roll-on aroma oils to apply to them. The design allowed users to switch the time spent with a scent on and off by putting the bangle on or taking it off.

At the sales counter, however, it was the roll-ons that sold. Customers said they wanted just the fragrance and wanted to apply it directly to their skin. Mukaida therefore chose to switch to spray perfumes that could be used on skin as cosmetics and continue testing the business. Mukaida reconsidered the product’s form through the way customers wanted to use “this scent.”

The name Crazy Jasmine was chosen when a booth name was needed for participation in a gift show. It expresses the feeling of someone who cannot get enough of jasmine. The meaning “Crazy for Jasmine” became the brand’s name.

Testing in Stores and Establishing a Separate Company in 2026

Alongside testing at retail counters, an e-commerce site opened in September 2024. Its purpose was to give people who had already experienced the scent a place to buy their next bottle. In May 2025, Tsuyunai, who had experience in store and e-commerce sales, joined the team. Their connection began when Mukaida approached Tsuyunai in a corridor at headquarters and asked Tsuyunai to help sell at a pop-up.

In the second year of testing the business, they held 14 pop-ups over one year, not only in Tokyo but also in other regions. The sales floor became both a place to convey the fragrances and a place to learn about regional reactions and hear why people had not bought. In addition to the logo and packaging, Mukaida also works on designing fixtures that make it easy to experience the scents.

I also considered it important to draw what I had in mind and coordinate the tones of the colors we used.

Yoko Mukaida, on creating the pop-up environment

After approximately three years of testing, Crazy Jasmine Tokyo Co., Ltd. was established on May 1, 2026, as a wholly owned subsidiary of ITO EN. Mukaida became its president and representative director, moving into a new phase of growing a challenge that began inside a beverage company into a separate business company.

Tea and perfume also share the enjoyment of fragrance. Mukaida hopes that getting to know the flowers’ scents will encourage people to try tea as well. Work born from tea packaging connects back to tea through fragrance.

What Defines the Brand

Choosing a Single Note to Preserve the Scent of a Newly Opened Flower

Crazy Jasmine analyzes the scent of fresh flowers and recreates their impression in perfume. Its goal is the scent of newly opened flowers that Mukaida came to know by growing them.

During the process of turning the fragrance into perfume, compositions that changed over time were also tested. Adding musk and other notes, however, took it away from the floral impression Mukaida wanted to convey. Mukaida therefore prioritized the well-received roll-on scent and chose to sell it in its initial form and listen to customers rather than extend its longevity.

No.1 Jasmine Sambac is made as a single-note fragrance without base notes, the part that supports the later stages of a scent. Here, “single note” means a composition that sustains one fragrant theme: jasmine. The brand presents the experience as a whole, from the impression of flowers at the moment of application to their gentle fading.

Reflecting Differences in Flower Forms and Varieties Through Scent

Through cultivation, Mukaida learned that jasmine cannot be encompassed by a single scent. Whereas No.1 takes as its subject the sambac used in tea, No.2 Jasmine Green explores sambac with rose-shaped blooms. Analysis of the fresh flowers was used to recreate a dewy green impression.

No.5 Jasmine Jasmine, meanwhile, arose from a combination of No.1 and No.3 Royal Jasmine. It layers royal jasmine’s lily-like sweetness and woody impression with sambac. By distinguishing different flower forms, the brand deepens its subject toward enjoying their differences and combinations through scent as well.

Beyond perfume, the jasmine fragrances extend to aroma oils, home fragrances, and hand creams. The impression of flowers is placed not only on the skin but also in rooms and around the hands. These products offer ways to encounter jasmine in everyday life, regardless of the season or place in which it blooms.