Taking A Leaf From Nature

Shiseido renews its Future Solution LX skincare range with a revolutionary new ingredient, SkingenecellEnmei. Jane Ngiam travels to Mount Koya in Nagoya, Japan to discover the roots of its life-giving force

- Jane Ngiam

WHY ARE YOU VISITING Japan?” enquired the elderly officer politely at the immigration queue. We mentioned that we were there on the invitation of Shiseido.

“Ah! Shiseido-neh? Please, write here! Dozo! Dozo!” We dutifully penned “Shiseido” on our arrival card and with that endorsement, we cleared immigration smoothly.

We had just touched down in Nagoya, and already we found that the Shiseido name is much revered in its home country. The cosmetics and skincare giant employs some 36,500 staff in Japan, and is a respected company known for hiring some of the best researchers and scientists in the country.

Of its 700 scientists, 300 are women. And on this trip, I was invited to meet Eriko Kawai, the research scientist responsible for the discovery of a new ingredient that would lead to a remarkable formulation change in the brand’s Future Solution LX skincare range— SkingenecellEnmei.

LIFE-GIVING FORCE

It has taken Shiseido researchers eight years to work on the formulation of this new ingredient and to incorporate it into its most premium skincare range, the Future Solution LX. Kawai revealed over dinner that her work on researching this new ingredient started even before the Future Solution LX was launched in 2009, and that her husband, also a scientist at the Shiseido Laboratories, is already working with a team on a third formulation of the product for a future launch. This offers a glimpse into the progressiveness Shiseido adopts towards its research; something the beauty house has always been proud of.