Although today fragrance is one of the categories of cosmetics, the original type of fragrance, incense, has a long history in Japan, coming out first on record in Chronicles of Japan, in the year 595. Incense, which is essential for the ceremony of purging the Buddhist altar, had started to be used in Japan since the introduction of
Buddhism in the beginning of the sixth century. It had much religious significance, but according to the historical materials written in 747, Ehi incense, which was a mixture of six or seven kinds of incenses, used to be burned with clothes or Buddhist scriptures and was used as bug repellent, being inducted into daily necessities.
The ingredients of Ehi incense included agalloch of Thymelaeaceae; wood sandal of Santalaceae evergreen tree; clove, which is the floral bud of Syzygium aromaticum or Eugenia caryophyllata; spikenard oil, which is the extract of dry root or dry rhizome of valerianaceous plants; musk, which is extracted from the fragrance pouch
of the male musk deer and dried; and ambergris, which is a waxy secreted material obtained from sperm whale.
In ancient China, a preparation that combined 10–30 kinds of crude drugs such as soybean, red azuki bean,chalk, root of the crow gourd, sandalwood, and musk was used as washing charge. Much strong effervescent material called saponin was mixed with bean powder, such as adzuki beans, to impart the cleansing effect. In addition, honey locust, a Leguminosae plant, was also used, as it contains saponin in the fruit rind.7 As compared with modern cosmetics, these classic ancient cosmetics may be inferior in quality or functionality, but we can infer that people of those times had learned the basic functions and actions of natural products empirically,which had helped in the preparation of cosmetics since then.