Celebrating Shiseido’s affirmation that age is just a number

by Martin Moodie |
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Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie is the Founder & Chairman of The Moodie Report.
The Bougainvilleas in Hong Kong are out in a splendid mix of what looks like Shiseido-red and brilliant pink to welcome my own new year

The Discovery Bay, Hong Kong fire department is on standby mode in deference to reports of a worryingly large number of candles being lit in the vicinity this evening.

By my calculations, I’m starting the 24,838th day of my life (factoring in a whole lot of leap years and a couple of part ones). Yup, it’s my birthday, which, as always, coincides with the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, who died in 589 AD. Roughly around the time I was born.

My personal celebration (or self-commiseration) coincides with another auspicious occasion in the calendar. For this year the date also marks the beginning of Ramadan after the crescent moon was spotted yesterday (28 February), meaning 1.8 billion Muslims across the world will begin fasting from sunrise to sunset each day for the next month.

My birthday rituals started in Tokyo on Friday (28 February), when various members of the fabulous Shiseido communications team surprised me with birthday gifts, a celebratory dessert, a duo of candles (given the correct number, the local fire brigade, too, would have needed to be on call) and a tuneful Happy Birthday sung in a medley of Japanese and English.

As noted in my earlier Blogs (see below), I was in the Japanese capital to report the launch of Shiseido’s new Ultimune Power Infusing Serum, one of the biggest product innovations in the company’s long and proud history. You can see my full report and interviews coming soon on our main website.

A nice birthday touch from the Shiseido communications team. Pictured from left with me are Robert Jones III, Yuki Kobayashi, Linda Lee and Elsie Liu.

The venue was Shiseido Parlour Restaurant in Ginza, part of the 11-storey Shiseido Parlour, built on the very site where the Japanese beauty house’s whole story began in 1872 after Arinobu Fukuhara established the country’s first private Western-style dispensing pharmacy (later Shiseido).

In an adroit example of early 20th-century diversification, Fukuhara opened Japan’s first soda fountain on the site in 1902, producing and selling soda water and ice cream, the latter still a rarity at the time.

Geishas working in Tokyo’s Shimbashi district were the main clientele, receiving a bottle of Eudermine (the beauty house’s first lotion) for every glass of soda water – a gift with purchase (GWP) long before the term was invented.

Today, Shiseido Parlour features a tastebud-tempting ground-floor boutique packed with all kinds of epicurean delights from Hanatsubaki (camellia) chocolates and biscuits to the most exquisitely wrapped cheese cakes you ever saw. I tell you, if Shiseido ever decided to bring this concept to airport retail it would be a smash hit.

The floors above offer a wonderfully diverse and beguiling range of restaurants and cafés.

After learning about the science behind the new product on Wednesday, Thursday was dedicated to the art that underpins the Shiseido philosophy and shapes (literally as well as otherwise) its beauty products. The venue was Warehouse Terrada, a fulcrum of Japan’s art world, based in Tennozu, a waterfront district in Tokyo.

The facility’s high ceilings and vast open spaces are frequently deployed for exhibitions and product launches and as such offered the perfect venue for the beauty house to showcase the artistic heritage that runs like a Shiseido-red bloodline through everything it stands for.

Prologue: Gateway introduction to the new Ultimune

The exhibition was divided into a trio of mesmerising sections – The Origin, The Essence and The Science – designed individually and collectively to encapsulate the fusion of art, beauty and science.

This compelling three-part storyline comprised:

  • A hi-tech immersion (The Origin) into the serenity and colour of the Gotoh Islands, home to the wild Camellias from which Ultimune is produced (Camellia Room);

  • A dazzling technicolour illumination (The Essence by artist Manami Sakamoto) in Product Room;
  • The Science, a stunning fusion of dance and technology featuring visuals and music by Daito Manabe with choreography by Mikiko in Immersive Art & Science Room.

A breathtakingly immersive experience as the audience is surrounded by bright-red camellias in the Camellia Room

Inside the Product Room

Enchanting, exhilirating scenes inside the Immersive Art & Science Room

Shiseido Ultimune Epilogue – Unlocking the Future
I am joined by a strong China Duty Free Group delegation and Shiseido team members for a commemorative photo

During the cocktail evening held in Hanatsubaki Hall at Shiseido Future University on Wednesday evening, Shiseido Chief Brand Officer Echo Lo (below) proposed a toast to the new Ultimune Power Infusing Serum and to “making age just a number”. On this, my 24,838th day, I will celebrate that toast with glee. ✈

Echo Lo: “This is not just a product launch for us. It’s really a new perspective on beauty, a perspective that, with its authentic base in research, is changing how we see ageing.”

MEMORIES OF TOKYO

Shiseido President and CEO Kentaro Fujiwara takes to the stage on the day of the big unveiling. ”So today, in its 11th year, Ultimune, a new serum designed to prevent the skin ageing, is born.”

With Echo Lo (centre), other Shiseido managers and CDFG executives at the event cocktail evening
I was privileged to learn more about the science behind the new Ultimune Power Infusing Serum from Kentaro Kajiya, Vice President Busines Core Technology Center at Mirai Technology Institute (look out for my full report on the launch coming soon)

With China Duty Free Assistant General Manager Michelle Sun
Elsie Liu and Senior Director, Communications and Society, Travel Retail Linda Lee were my wonderfully hospitable hosts during the event
The parts (and hours) of my job that people don’t see. On a trip such as this, ‘the website that never sleeps’ and the Blog that is its constant companion need to be kept awake through the late night and early morning hours. My purchase of a Penfolds Max’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 from Duty Zero by cdf at Hong Kong International Airport en route to Japan proved the perfectly coloured (and tasting) accompaniment to all that Shiseido red theming in my Moodie Davitt Report Tokyo Edition Interim Bureau. 
I even created an Interim Bureau at the splendid Yakiniku Maruushi, where thinly sliced, deliciously marbled Wagyu beef is cooked in seconds in front of your eyes. Accompanied by a beautifully crunchy Choregi salad and washed down with a light but tasty red from Hiroshima Miyoshi Winery, it was the perfect culmination to a long day.  

And what more appropriate way to close out an enthralling Shiseido experience than to visit the brand’s flagship boutique at Tokyo Haneda International Airport, operated by Japan Airport Terminal Co?

Click on the images above and below to read my earlier Blogs from Tokyo

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