The Last Incense Maker of Kyoto
The narrow alley behind Kiyomizu-dera temple is easy to miss. No signage, no storefront display, just a weathered wooden door that has welcomed visitors for over two centuries. Behind it, 83-year-old Takeshi Nakamura sits cross-legged on tatami mats, hand-rolling incense sticks with the same deliberate movements his grandfather taught him.
"People think incense is simple," Nakamura-san says, pressing a thin layer of aloeswood paste around a bamboo core. "But it takes twenty years to understand how humidity changes the blend. Thirty years to know which combination of woods will create a scent that carries memory."
A Vanishing Art
When Nakamura-san began his apprenticeship in 1958, there were seventeen incense workshops in this district of Kyoto alone. Today, his is the last. The industrial revolution came for incense just as it came for everything else, replacing hand-rolled sticks with machine-extruded versions that smell sharp and chemical by comparison.
Our partner Yuki Tanaka first discovered Nakamura-san's workshop during a university research project on vanishing crafts. "The moment I walked in and smelled that first stick burning, I understood why this tradition matters," she recalls. "It wasn't just a pleasant smell. It was a doorway to a different kind of attention."
The Sacred Process
Each batch of Nakamura-san's incense begins weeks before the actual rolling. He sources raw aloeswood from a single supplier in Vietnam, sandalwood from Karnataka, cloves from Zanzibar. These ingredients are ground in a stone mortar, mixed with water from a spring in the eastern hills, and left to mature in cedar boxes until the master deems them ready.
The incense does not follow a schedule. I follow the incense.
The rolling itself is almost meditative to watch. Nakamura-san's hands move with a precision that belies their age, creating sticks so uniform you would swear they were machine-made, yet each one carries the subtle signature of human touch.
When we bring his incense to the world through Heritage Souk, we carry not just a product but a living tradition. Each box comes with a certificate signed by Nakamura-san himself, and a portion of every sale goes directly to supporting his workshop and the apprentice he has finally, after decades of searching, found worthy of carrying on his work.
