DI SER: From Hokkaido to the World, Fragrances Connecting the Visible and the Invisible

“Perfume is both art and medicine, something anyone can easily wear in everyday life.”

— Yasuyuki Shinohara, DI SER perfumer

Essential Information

Founded: 1999, when perfume production began; international outreach under the DI SER name began in 2011

Founder: Yasuyuki Shinohara, pharmacist and perfumer

Operating company: Essentia Co., Ltd.

Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido

Official website: https://www.diser-parfum.com

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

Who Is Yasuyuki Shinohara?

To understand DI SER, it is first necessary to understand its founder, Yasuyuki Shinohara. A pharmacist and perfumer originally from Chiba Prefecture, Shinohara co-founded Essentia Co., Ltd. and the research institution Luz Research in 1999. “Luz” means “light” in Spanish, and the themes of “water, light, scent, and sound” have been central to the business since its beginnings.

The official website and descriptions by retailers introduce him as both “one of Japan’s foremost scientists” and a farmer who grows plants on his own farm. These two sides, scientist and farmer, are at the very heart of DI SER.

Shinohara has a distinctive approach to perfumery. When he begins creating a fragrance, he does not first decide on a deadline, price, or name. In his words, he “simply waits for inspiration to arrive on a pure white canvas, then begins creating just as it comes.” He says that inspiration comes from walking in Hokkaido’s natural surroundings or soaking in local hot springs. This attitude is the opposite of the schedule-driven product development common in today’s perfume industry.

1999: Experiments Beginning in a Small Sapporo Workshop

Around 1999, Shinohara began making perfume in Sapporo, Hokkaido. It was reportedly a very small undertaking at first, with sales limited to a shop in Sapporo. Yet what he was building alongside it at the time was more than simply a perfume workshop. From an early stage, the company was designed around three pillars: a division manufacturing pharmaceutical and botanical cosmetic products, a division researching and developing plant ingredients, and an agricultural division that actually grew the plants.

This suggests that Shinohara never intended to make only “perfume.” For him, fragrance may have been something that arose naturally where plant science, pharmacy, and agriculture met. To borrow his words from an interview, “In the process of making products, I came to recognize the importance of the quality of the raw materials and the methods of extraction, and decided to begin farming.”

In essays he wrote for the official website, Shinohara describes visiting the Kashan region of Iran, known for its Damask roses, and observing local farmers harvesting roses from four in the morning. He also recounts attending classes at GIP, the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, in Grasse in southern France, the spiritual home of perfume. This insistence on firsthand knowledge is characteristic of his scientific disposition.

2011: The Earthquake That Prompted a Turn Toward the World

The turning point for these perfumes, long a local brand confined to Sapporo, came with the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. In the wake of that event, Shinohara decided to give his perfumes the name DI SER and begin sharing them with the world.

The name DI SER carries the meaning of “connecting what is visible with what is invisible.” Scent is itself invisible, yet it can act as a bridge linking memory and emotion, and even science and spirituality. This worldview of Shinohara’s is inscribed in the name itself.

DI SER’s subsequent progress was steady. In 2012, it took part for the first time in the Elements Showcase perfume exhibition in New York. It participated in Pitti Fragranze in Florence in 2016 and TRANOÏ Parfum in Paris in 2017, the same year its perfumes went on sale at ONODA in Zurich, Switzerland. Lucky Scent Inc. in Los Angeles began carrying the brand in 2018, and an agreement with Sweden’s Gents AB followed in 2019. Its presence spread among leading independent perfume retailers around the world.

Recognition and Achievements

International recognition gradually accumulated as well. In 2019, DI SER’s perfume was selected to scent the ceremony venue for the Kyoto Prize, known as one of Japan’s most prestigious international awards.

In 2020, Keman was selected as a finalist in the Artisan category of the Art and Olfaction Awards 2020, organized by an American nonprofit. Keman was the first perfume Shinohara co-created with the American social epidemiologist and perfumer Rajesh Balkrishnan. Shinohara himself says, “I learned a way of working I had never tried before: setting the deadline, quantity, and price first, and creating something to meet those conditions.”

In 2021, Hanamatsuri won the top prize among 112 entries from 27 countries at the BOW (Barcelona Olfaction Week) International Perfume Competition 2021 in Barcelona, Spain. On receiving the award, Shinohara said, “I may be the first Japanese person to receive an award like this in this field. It is a tremendous encouragement for Japan and for me personally.”

What Defines the Brand

Bringing “Slow Food” to Perfume: A Foundation of Natural, Circular Agriculture

At the most fundamental level, DI SER believes in growing its own ingredients. It cultivates at least 300 species of herbs and other plants in its own woodland and fields within Sapporo, Hokkaido. The methods are entirely natural, using neither fertilizers nor pesticides. All plant matter remaining after essential-oil extraction is returned to the earth to enrich the following year’s soil, putting “natural, circular agriculture” into practice.

This farming method is not merely a way to use “organic” as a selling point. Shinohara says he designed it as a business model that would help the local community become self-sufficient and prosperous by creating jobs for local people and maintaining the woodland and fields. Perfume emerges as an extension of that work.

Most of the ingredients used come from Hokkaido and elsewhere in Japan, but aromatic woods and spices that do not grow in Japan are carefully sourced from around the world. Damask roses from Kashan in Iran and the highest-quality agarwood are representative examples.

Plant Cell Water: A Proprietary Extraction Technique

DI SER’s scientific side is most clearly expressed in its exploration of extraction techniques. One particularly notable process among its proprietary developments is known as “Plant Cell Water.” This method distills plants under a low-temperature vacuum without adding any water, extracting the moisture and aromatic components within their cells just as they are. The absence of added water is said to limit oxidation and yield a purer material.

The harvested plants are also distilled immediately in a laboratory built on the company’s own farm. This reflects the view that minimizing the delay between harvesting and extraction is essential to preserving the quality of the scent.

Fifteen Years Pursuing a Legendary Material: Kyara

No account of DI SER’s technical expertise would be complete without its remarkable achievement of turning kyara into perfume.

In kōdō, Japan’s traditional art of incense appreciation, agarwood is classified by origin and scent according to the “six countries and five tastes,” or rokkoku gomi. Kyara is considered the highest quality within this system. It is so rare that it is now said to cost as much as US$500 per gram. Its scarcity and the difficulty of extracting it have led its use as a perfume ingredient to be regarded within the industry as “almost impossible.”

DI SER spent a full fifteen years developing a technique for extracting this kyara as an oil in a form suitable for perfume. In the 1,400 years kyara had been part of Japanese culture, it had never been used in perfume; DI SER was the first to give it that form.

Bottles and Packaging: The Beauty of Subtraction

All DI SER perfumes are bottled in simple, square glass flacons. They bear no logo. The caps are made of natural wood.

This rigorously unadorned appearance seems to resonate with the Japanese aesthetic concepts of empty space and subtraction. The packaging uses boxes made of kiri, or paulownia, said to be Japan’s lightest wood. Highly resistant to moisture and heat, paulownia boxes are a traditional material long used to store treasured possessions such as kimono and musical instruments.

All DI SER perfumes are also unisex and sold in 33 ml bottles, with 1 ml samples available as well.

A Philosophy Rooted in Kōdō

The philosophy of kōdō is DI SER’s spiritual foundation. In kōdō, people speak of “listening” to fragrance, or monkō, rather than “smelling” it. This carries the meaning of “listening to the voice of your own heart” through scent.

The brand’s symbol is the lotus flower, a symbol of enlightenment in Buddhism. The lotus, which blooms beautifully precisely because it rises from muddy water, also symbolizes each person’s life. DI SER’s worldview is one of harmoniously connecting this world and the world beyond through invisible fragrance.

The Perfume Lineup

DI SER currently offers sixteen fragrances, including parfum and eau de parfum versions, all of them unisex. Its creations have accumulated chronologically rather than being divided into clearly defined collections, but they can broadly be understood through the following developments.

Early Creations: Exploring Materials and Japanese Tradition, 2000s–2010s

Tsuki, released in 2000, was DI SER’s first perfume. Geranium, grapefruit, coriander, fennel, and juniper create a transparent herbal fragrance with a medicinal-herb character.

Kyara centers on the highest-quality kyara agarwood, for which DI SER spent fifteen years perfecting an extraction technique, combined with rose oil, patchouli, cedarwood, and sandalwood. Its price of more than US$1,000 for 33 ml reflects the extreme rarity of the material and the complexity of the extraction process. Among perfume critics, it holds the status of a “cult masterpiece.”

Hasunoito also uses kyara, combining it with floral scents including rose, jasmine, boronia, and lotus.

A Collaborative Creation: Keman

Released in 2019, Keman is the result of the only collaboration Shinohara has experienced in which conditions were set before creation began. His collaborator was Rajesh Balkrishnan, a social epidemiologist and perfumer at the University of Virginia in the United States. Named after keman, a floral offering in Buddhist temples, the perfume is composed of yuzu, shiso, rose, jasmine, blue tansy, cherry blossom, agarwood, and cypress. The first limited release sold out immediately, and it was also selected as an Artisan-category finalist in the 2020 Art and Olfaction Awards.

An Award-Winning Creation: Hanamatsuri

Released in 2021, Hanamatsuri takes its theme from the flower festival celebrating the Buddha’s birthday on April 8 and was created with cherry blossom, magnolia, and violet. It won the top prize at Barcelona Olfaction Week 2021.

Recent Creations Inspired by Nature, the Seasons, and Japanese Beauty

Recent releases have continued to explore Japanese natural landscapes and classical beauty.

• Hana no Oto (2022): Its title conveys the kōdō concept of “listening to fragrance as one listens to sound.” It is composed of several kinds of rose, including hamanasu, and aromatic woods.
• Izayoi (2023): A fragrance expressing the beauty of old Japan through sansho pepper, yuzu, rose, and aromatic woods.
• Hikaru Daichi and Hoshi Tsukiyo (2022): Transparent woody fragrances exploring trees, earth, and light.
• Kamikura (2024): An international collaboration created to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Sweden’s Gents AB.
• Kumo no Koromo (2024): A composition of Hokkaido-grown Sakhalin fir, bergamot, neroli, patchouli, and vetiver, available as both parfum and eau de parfum.
• Zuko (2025): A fragrance that uses modern technology to transform Japan’s traditional powdered incense, zuko, into perfume, based on turmeric, clove, borneol, and agarwood, materials said to have been used medicinally by Kūkai.

Overall Structure and Characteristics

Across DI SER’s range, many perfumes follow a progression from citrus top notes such as yuzu and lime, through spicy, balsamic, floral, and fruity facets, to an earthy, woody base. Many contain hamanasu, the Hokkaido rose scientifically known as Rosa rugosa, grown on DI SER’s own farm. It has become a signature running through the brand as a whole.

A Few More Details…

• DI SER is said to do business with the Japanese Imperial Household and one of Japan’s oldest shrines.
• Kamikura, released in 2024, was created over at least a year from its initial conception to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Swedish barbershop and perfume specialist Gents AB, offering one example of DI SER’s international collaborations.