The Wooden Guard
Daylight protection woven from hinoki cypress, the wood of shrines.
Included in WAKASA Imperial, or order directly from the Kyoto house through your member sanctum.
The great shrines of Ise are rebuilt every twenty years, and for thirteen centuries the hinoki cypress has been their bone. The wood holds temples together through typhoon and frost, and its scent is the smell of a Japanese forest after rain. This cream carries that same wood to your skin. A Kyoto atelier, four artisans, no machines louder than a glass rod, infuses cold pressed oil with hinoki water gathered from shrine carpenters' offcuts. During the day it stands like a light roof over the skin, holding moisture in, letting the city stay outside. It smells faintly of the forest, and the forest is working.
Hinoki water from the sawmills of Nara, distilled slow. Cold pressed camellia and rice bran oil from Kyoto farms. Beeswax from mountain hives. Emulsified by hand in copper bowls, in batches of forty jars. The atelier works three days a week, because that is how long a batch deserves.
Each morning, after washing the face, press one pearl of cream into the cheeks and forehead. Let it sink for one breath before anything else touches the skin.