Shunkōdō

Shunkōdō opened in 1921 (Taishō 10) in Nagoya's Osu district, when Eijiro Ogawa — who had apprenticed at a Chinese herbal medicine wholesaler — set up his own herbal medicine business there. The incense side of the company grew directly out of that trade: local Buddhist priests asked him to blend incense using the Chinese herbal medicine materials he already stocked, and that request became the shop's actual line of work.

The house has kept that origin visible in how it talks about its own products, describing its incense as built on Chinese herbal formulas chosen for their effect on the body and surroundings as much as their scent — a framing that treats fragrance and medicine as historically the same practice rather than separate categories. Its catalogue has grown to roughly 160 original incense types, using agarwood and sandalwood sourced from Vietnam and India.

Still run from the same Osu neighborhood more than a century after Ogawa's apprenticeship led him into incense by way of a request from local temples, Shunkōdō remains one of the few Japanese incense houses whose founding story runs through herbal medicine rather than court or temple patronage.