LIBERTA PERFUME: Daiki Yamane’s Career Change and Perfumes Born from Dialogue and Japanese Materials

Rather than ownership, I want to offer the joy of knowing and experiencing.
Daiki Yamane (founder and perfumer)

What value can be created in the time before someone acquires a perfume? Daiki Yamane, founder of LIBERTA PERFUME, values the process itself: touching raw materials, speaking with a perfumer, and discovering changes through trials.

That thinking also appears in the finished perfumes. Scentless hydrangeas inspire a composition evoking rain and an old temple, while plums left over from making umeshu yield a new fragrance material. Discovering one’s own preferences and reconsidering Japanese materials and landscapes through smell: the brand opens up both possibilities.

Key Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
The Brand’s Commitments
References

Key Information

Brand name: LIBERTA PERFUME
Brand launched: 2020, Tokyo
Founder and perfumer: Daiki Yamane
Operating company: Scentopia Inc. (founded in 2019)
Meaning of the brand name: “freedom” in Italian
Official website: LIBERTA PERFUME

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

Studying Perfumery alongside a Consulting Career

Yamane was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1991. After graduating from university, Yamane joined an international consulting firm and sought a path into the world of perfume while working there. Already an enthusiast with a collection of several hundred perfumes, Yamane was also attracted to work that involved creating something new.

Yamane had been thinking of starting a business someday when the firm’s vice president offered encouragement: if there was something Yamane wanted to do, the time to start was now. Reflecting on personal interests brought perfume to mind. Yamane contacted perfumery schools and perfumers in Japan and met Satori Osawa of Parfum Satori (in Japanese).

While studying fragrance materials and composition under Osawa, Yamane also learned how difficult it was to find employment as a perfumer. Even so, the desire to bring original fragrances to the world as soon as possible remained. Yamane chose to establish a brand, founding Scentopia in 2019 and launching LIBERTA PERFUME the following year, in 2020.

Changing How People Encounter Fragrance through Online Profiling in 2020

The starting point was a desire that simply choosing from ready-made products could not satisfy. Yamane sought to create a way for people to discover scents that suited them and encounter fragrances they could love for years. Knowledge of perfumery and consultation was translated into a profiling system, and the brand began operating through online services and pop-ups.

In 2020, the online profiling service took the form of twenty questions. Some explored fragrance preferences, while others considered what scents might suit the person. Asking about a favorite drink, for example, helped identify an olfactory direction through taste preferences. The design allowed people to begin with their everyday lives without knowing the names of fragrance materials.

LIBERTA’s aim of “democratizing fragrance” means enabling everyone to discover the scents they like and wear fragrances they love. The profiling service became the first point of contact for that purpose.

Opening a Lab in Nakameguro in 2023 to Make Blending Visible

In 2023, the brand opened its Lab Perfumery in Nakameguro, its first street-front shop. A perfumer’s atelier and a perfume manufacturing space coexist there, with staff centered on a dedicated team of perfumers providing consultations directly.

Where the online service used questions to identify an olfactory direction, the lab lets visitors put their wishes into words while smelling materials and test them through trial compositions. The lab had established a process of trying several dozen fragrance materials and choosing one perfume from five samples. Consultation results are sent to the in-store lab, and visitors can also watch through glass as their selected materials are blended.

Fragrance should be more open, and the range of ways to enjoy it should expand.
Daiki Yamane (during coverage of the Nakameguro lab)

The design, which reveals the interior through large panes of glass, reflects a wish for people to encounter not only perfume but also the work of its makers. The process of a fragrance coming into being was added to a retail space for trying finished products. When the lab marked its third anniversary in September 2026, Yamane reflected that this place, where fully bespoke and ready-made perfumes intersect, had accelerated the brand’s creativity.

From a Single Founder to a Team’s Creativity

In 2023, Yamane’s teaching at Vantan covered not only fragrance materials and composition but also the path toward establishing one’s own brand. The aim is an education that shares knowledge gained through practice and invites experts from Japan and abroad. Increasing the number of people who create scents or choose careers in fragrance has also become part of the brand’s activities.

In a message for the brand’s fifth anniversary in 2025, Yamane described a brand advancing through the overlap of different perspectives, skills, and passions. In the practical work of perfumery, experience resides in hands and noses, and individual creativity meets and sets off reactions. Yamane sees the potential for original fragrances in that accumulated experience.

I believe that this is how original fragrances are born.
Daiki Yamane (message for the brand’s fifth anniversary in 2025)

The Brand’s Commitments

The Creative Approaches of Two Collections

The dialogue and perfumery developed through fully bespoke work also extend into the ready-made Prêt-à-Porter range. Two collections in particular differ in their creative starting points.

LIBERATION is an attempt to give scent to things that have none, freely translating images of Japanese culture, seasons, and everyday life into perfume. Japan Material, by contrast, searches for materials around Japan and rediscovers their scents.

Rain Blossom: Expressing the Rainy Season and an Old Temple

Released on June 15, 2024, Rain Blossom is the fifth LIBERATION creation, adding the rainy season to four works representing the four seasons. Its subject is an old temple in the rain, with hydrangeas in bloom. Rather than extracting scent from hydrangeas themselves, it constructs the scene surrounding the flowers.

The brand developed an original rain accord by combining the smell of falling rain with that of earth splashed by raindrops. An accord is a unified scent created by combining several scents. Incense and sandalwood are layered with a fresh, watery floral accord, leading toward a temple gate and the stillness of the temple.

Yamane explains that the composition layers in even the sound of rain, wet moss, and the suggestion of incense drifting through the temple gate. The structure, which Yamane compares to Japanese cuisine, allows each element’s character to remain distinct. Rather than making flowers alone the protagonists, it places rain, earth, and a place of prayer alongside one another.

Turning Plums Left after Umeshu Production into a Fragrance Material for Amanoume

Amanoume, part of Japan Material, connects ume fruit and the making of umeshu with the exploration of fragrance materials. Through the British audio manufacturer KEF, a brand partner, Yamane met Takada, a craft umeshu producer in Minabe, Wakayama Prefecture.

In the plum orchards, the sourness and sweetness drifting from the fruit inspired a connection between the flesh’s sweetness, reminiscent of ripe peaches, and the richness of umeshu. For the perfume, the brand purchases the plums left after umeshu production, known as residue, or the material remaining after processing, and obtains its own umeshu extract through ultra-high-pressure extraction.

Juniper berries and spices are also combined to express the character of the gin-based craft umeshu. The composition incorporates not only the scent of plums but also the choices of the drink’s maker. Yamane also hopes to help protect plum orchards that are disappearing as the market shrinks and successors become scarce, by collaborating with producers.

Amanoume is formulated as a Cologne Concentrée rather than an eau de parfum. Japan Material aims for a light feel that fits into everyday life while making the most of each material’s character. To achieve this, the search for fragrance materials and the design of the product are considered together.

Three New Creations Exploring Regional Materials in 2026

This exploration has continued, with three creations announced in 2026 based on lemon blossom, gardenia, and white peach. They went on advance sale at Salon de Parfum in October, with general release scheduled from November 1. For the white peach fragrance, the brand purchases the skins of out-of-specification peaches destined for processing and subjects them to ultra-high-pressure extraction. The approach of collaborating with regional producers to discover new fragrance materials in familiar things is expanding.