HATENKO: Atsushi Shimizu’s Journey and Fragrances Connecting Ukiyo-e, Woodworking, and Dyeing

I want to take the craftsmanship further.

Atsushi Shimizu, reflecting on the time when Shimizu was planning a perfume brand for the company

HATENKO is a Japanese fragrance brand launched in April 2025 by perfumer and director Atsushi Shimizu. It translates the riversides, seas, and uncanny stories depicted in ukiyo-e into scent, bringing the handwork of woodworking and Kaga Yuzen dyeing to its bottles.

Behind it lies Shimizu’s experience making scented products for other companies and building relationships with materials producers and craftspeople across Japan. The idea of conveying Japanese culture through perfume has continued from the founding of Shimizu’s company.

Key Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
What Defines the Brand
References

Key Information

Brand launch: April 2025
Founder, perfumer, and director: Atsushi Shimizu
Operating company: Kyara Innovate Co., Ltd. (established in 2008)
Place of origin: Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan
Official website: HATENKO

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

From Fragrance Sales to Founding a Company in 2008

In a previous job, Shimizu also worked for a fragrance-related company, where Shimizu led sales. Shimizu was involved in product management and OEM work, planning and manufacturing scented products for other brands. Traveling around Japan, Shimizu sensed a decline in Japanese manufacturing and wanted to connect its techniques and backgrounds with fragrance. Unable to realize that vision at the company at the time, however, Shimizu chose to go independent.

The company Shimizu founded in 2008 was Kyara Innovate. Beginning as a one-person operation, it made scented products for apparel brands, among other clients. When development budgets shrank in the wake of the Lehman collapse, Shimizu expanded into e-commerce, also carrying other companies’ products. After the business stabilized, investment enabled Shimizu to move the office to Asakusa and return attention to making things.

Learning Perfumery Through Commissions and Connections with Materials

At first, Shimizu partnered with outside fragrance manufacturers and also worked on producing diffusers in Japan. In time, Shimizu collaborated with a mentor who owned a small fragrance company, and Shimizu personally learned perfumery techniques. Around 2018, Shimizu was responsible for fragrances for an organic cosmetics brand.

Regional connections also accumulated through the development of the company’s own scented products. For WANOWA, Shimizu incorporated materials such as yuzu and hinoki cypress through relationships with producers and local communities. Shimizu says the encounter with hinoki fragrance came about because essential oil was being collected where a woodworking company sourced its timber. Rather than seeking wood and fragrance separately, Shimizu had experienced finding them through the same relationships in craftsmanship.

The more scents Shimizu made for other companies, the more plans for Shimizu’s own perfumes grew. Shimizu did not, however, rush to launch them. The opening words, “I want to take the craftsmanship further,” retain the challenge of deepening Shimizu’s achievements in commissioned work into a personal expression.

In 2025, a Brand Connecting Ukiyo-e and Artisans’ Skills

In August 2023, Shimizu opened the directly operated shop inimu in Asakusa. It is a place where people can not only buy fragrances but also make them. Shimizu subsequently positioned ukiyo-e as the entry point to the perfumes. Shimizu believed that Hokusai and Hiroshige, who are also known overseas, could provide a way to convey Japanese culture.

In April 2025, HATENKO debuted with five fragrances: Hanabi, Isonami, Odoroodoro, Sakigake, and Sakurafubuki. Its name expresses the idea of breaking through difficulties in unexplored territory to do something new. Joining Shimizu, who handles perfumery and direction, were Hayakawa Woodworks, which makes the wooden caps; Okuda Senshoku, which applies Kaga Yuzen techniques to wood; and Ryo Maruoka, who handles the logo and art direction. Fragrance, wood, dyeing, and graphics were combined as a single work.

In the autumn of the same year, the brand introduced Kabukicho, inspired by Utagawa Kunisada’s Naito Shinjuku from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji from the Eastern Capital. Elements recalling whisky and tobacco depict the contemporary city at night. Here, too, its direction is apparent: using Edo-period imagery as a starting point to connect fragrance with the atmosphere of a place today.

What Defines the Brand

Translating Ukiyo-e Scenes into Wearable Fragrance

I choose pictures that are easier to create as fragrances.

Atsushi Shimizu, on selecting ukiyo-e prints

Shimizu does not choose subjects solely for a picture’s fame. For Isonami, Shimizu had wanted to use Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa. Starting from the familiar landscape of the sea, Shimizu aims for a modern, light aquatic fragrance, meaning a scent that evokes water or the ocean.

Hanabi takes its subject from Utagawa Hiroshige’s Fireworks at Ryogoku, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Green notes suggesting summer grasses and citrus are layered with plum and birch elements representing charcoal. The composition includes not just light in the night sky but also riverside plants and smoke, transferring the scene to contemporary Asakusa.

Odoroodoro explores the world of Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s The Ruined Palace at Soma and Santo Kyoden’s illustrated novel Utou Yasukata Chugiden, on which the print was based. The cool direction of lemon, rosemary, and mint is combined with floral, woody, and leather elements to express the chill and mystery of a dark night. Among the encounters that encouraged its creation was a performance of Hoichi the Earless by a biwa player and a ghost-story teller. Connections with ghost stories and performance also move Shimizu’s creative work forward.

Caps Combining Tono Hinoki and Kaga Yuzen

The wooden caps of the initial perfumes use Tono hinoki cypress from Gifu. Hayakawa Woodworks shapes the wood, and Okuda Senshoku incorporates Kaga Yuzen techniques into its decoration. Colors and patterns created through meticulous handwork are layered onto a material with a visible grain.

Ryo Maruoka created the logo from the shape of torn paper and designed collages that reconstruct ukiyo-e. Printing on the base of the bottle makes the logo’s “H” emerge when viewed directly from above.

I would also like people to enjoy the thoughtful, stylish touches scattered throughout the product that become visible from different angles.

Ryo Maruoka, on the design, in a statement on the brand’s official website

When the box is opened, the bottle is covered in ukiyo-e wrapping paper. Tearing the paper, touching the wood, and looking into the glass: even these small actions contain ideas that connect the brand name, the imagery, and the artisans’ skills.

Combining Places and Times Through “Kikikasane”

In homage to the Japanese art of incense, HATENKO calls the layering of two or more fragrances “kikikasane.” It proposes that wearers combine fragrances, each of which depicts a particular scene.

This idea also extends to the 2026 Tokimeguri Gokei set. It consists of five fragrances connecting places and times: morning in Nihonbashi, daytime in Naniwa, twilight in Asakusa, early evening in Ginza, and the middle of the night in Kabukicho. Layering Nihonbashi and Asakusa, for example, expresses the passage from morning to dusk.

The new Asakusa fragrance takes its cue from Hiroshige’s Kinryuzan Temple at Asakusa, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. It layers an expression of the four seasons through daphne, gardenia, osmanthus, and yuzu with a lingering impression of sandalwood and other notes. Pagoda tree wood, known as enju, was chosen for the wooden cap, considering ties to the place through both fragrance and materials. Asakusa and Tokimeguri Gokei went on advance sale at Isetan Shinjuku on October 7, 2026, with a nationwide launch scheduled for October 13.