DeutschJournal — Places
Meanwhile, in Japan …
On Ranjatai, the most revered block of agarwood in Japan, kept — and only rarely cut — at the Shōsōin in Nara.
Ranjatai (蘭奢待), the imperial store of agarwood at the Shōsōin, Nara — incenseofmusic.com archive
In the Shōsōin treasure house at Nara lies a block of agarwood some one and a half metres long, known since at least the eighth century as Ranjatai. Emperors, shoguns and at least one modern head of state have each, over the centuries, been permitted to cut away a sliver for themselves — the wood is that rare, and that revered.
Its scent, warmed gently rather than burned outright, is said to be complex almost beyond description: somewhere between honey, leather and rain on warm stone. Kōdō, the Japanese "way of incense", grew up around exactly this kind of attention — listening to a scent, as the tradition puts it, rather than simply smelling it.