The first experience of “listening to incense”. The traditional accomplishment of incense woods.

There are many traditional accomplishments like tea ceremony in Japan. Monko is one of them, but it is not popular for Japanese people. For the first time my wife and I participated in Monko, listening to incense, at a workshop in Kyoto. Despite of “listening to” ,the action of Monko is to smell fragrance of incense woods.

Before Monko trials the owner of the workshop talked simply to twenty participants including us about incense woods. The workshop is in the traditional fragrance shop since the Edo period. The owner is the descendant of the originator, he explained about incense woods and the history of Monko. Incense woods have three categories, kyara, aloeswood and sandalwood. Kyara is precious aloeswood, both of kyara and aloeswood are made from resin. These are made over several centuries accumulation of resin and long fermentation underground. These are found in the south-east Asian countries, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, India and neighboring countries, but recently these are so few because of the long making time and the overtaking for its expensiveness. On the other hand sandalwood is the core part of wood trunks.

To smell incense woods was popular in samurai society since the Kamakura period, and Monko was generated and sophisticated by the eighth lord of Muromachi Bakufu, Yoshimasa Ashikaga, who built Ginkaku-ji(the silver temple) known as a famous sightseeing spot.

What the participants would try to smell was not smoke with fragrance but the air of incense, the owner said. Ancient people, who had investigated Monko extremely in an effort to extract a pure fragrance from incense woods, invented an instrument which heated the incense woods. It is a censer for Monko.

Monko has two styles, what we experienced was Genjiko. Incense woods made over long term times are so natural that fragrance of a small chip which is cut from a incense wood is different from the other fragrance, even if the incense wood is same. Genjiko is the game which participants judge five times whether a fragrance is same as the previous fragrance or not.

Twenty participants including my wife and I were invited to the Monko room and we sat down on the Japanese seats, zabutons. The room was clean and didn’t have any fragrance. We were kind of nervous and waited for the beginning. Two women of the workshop who were presenters of Genjiko sat down in front of us and they spoke the rules of Genjiko. There were two young foreign women among the participants, they couldn’t understand Japanese, but a workshop staff gave them English handbooks of Genjiko and a man sitting next to them translated the presenter’s explanation to them.

One presenter sent a censer which is a Chinese like cup to the first guest and set it on the tatami by hand. In the censer there is a heated incense wood. The first guest took it up and smelled the fragrance of incense woods and passed down the censer on the tatami to the next seated person. The censer was passed along to all the participants, all participants smelled the same fragrance.

The first trial censer came to me, the manner of Genjiko rules controlled my action. I took up the censer by my right hand. With putting it on my left palm in front of my face and lifting it up slightly with both hands I nodded to it, and I turned the censer counter-clockwise a half round by my right hand. Moreover I enclosed the mouse of the censer by my thumb and other four fingers of my right hand.

 Well, the main actions of Genjiko began. I concentrated on the trial. After breathing out silently,I brought down my nose to the hole of the censer enclosed by my fingers, I smelled the incense slowly and exhaled out of the hole. The first impression was completely different from my memory of many fragrances of incense in a Japanese room and a temple. Such fragrances are kind of smokey, but the fragrance of Monko was not smokey at all, tender and complex. It was a fresh experience for the first time during my life. However I had no time to enjoy it. I was in a game and I had to answer surely. I repeated the same three actions following the manner of Genjiko rules. I concentrated all my senses at my nose and brain and noted any feelings, woody, spicy, flourishing, sweet or anything of the fragrance in my mind. After my decision I turned the censer clockwise a half round and put it on the tatami on my left for the next person.

From the second trial to the final trial I acted the same, but the more I smelled, the larger the difficulty of confirming the fragrance was. To smell fragrance of incense woods by my nose but my ears was similar to “listening to“ exactly in my conscious mind. Especially the final trial was so difficult that I was puzzled whether the final fragrance was the same as previous one or not. I decided the answer based on my own sense, at the final action of Genjiko I searched for one from the fifty two patterned designs and drew the design which I selected on my paper.

All participants finished the five trials in the completely silent atmosphere, after that all the members relaxed from the concentration and talked about every answer freely. I listened to them talking about their trial answers and I knew some answers were different from my answer. Each person’s sense of smelling seems to be different and it is difficult to keep an old note. I said to my wife that I hesitated on the fifth trial and chose “No”, my wife’s answers were the same as mine till the forth trial but only the fifth was different from my final answer.

The presenters gathered the twenty answers of the participants and began to explain the correct answers. The number of people who gave the right answers was only four, and one of them was my wife. About an hour long event finished.

Before this Monko I smelled testers of incense woods at this shop. The fragrance of kyara was spicy for me, the fragrance of aloeswood was a kind of bad smell similar to the Asian taste like fish based source and the fragrance of sandalwood is familiar to me.

For me, the best was sandalwood, the second was kyara and the last was aloeswood. I think that my sense of fragrance was belongs to my life.

A hour and a half later, I tried three fragrances at the shop again after Monko. Surprisingly my sense had changed, the most favorite fragrance was kyara, the next was aloeswood. Sandalwood changed to the least interesting fragrance for me.

This event of Monko was held by the Japan Society Of Kansei Engineering. Its main idea is that Kansei(sense of feelings) is able to grow through many good experiences and good knowledge. At last my sense of fragrance changed through the explanation by the owner and the experience of Monko following the idea of it.

Finally I want to say thank you to the shop owner. Without his strong will to maintain and to develop the tradition it would be difficult to keep a Monko workshop. A workshop staff said to me that many foreigners came to experience Monko, listening to incense woods, in order to know a Japanese traditional culture.

Yamada-Matsu Co,.