How can a bar of soap cost as much as $16?

We are sometimes asked, “How can a bar of soap cost as much as $19?” Here are a couple of reasons why our soap bar is more expensive than other brands.

1. Traditional Japanese Manufacturing Process

Our soap bars are manufactured at a factory in Japan using traditional manufacturing processes, to keep our sensitive ingredients. Traditional manufacturing processes require manual labor and a lot of time, unlike the machinery processes commonly found in the U.S.

The soap’s raw ingredients are slowly poured into frames with 300 mesh strings to prevent any impurities. This process takes an entire day. After cutting the soap into pieces, we brush the edges with a curler one by one so that the soap won’t wrinkle. Next, we dry the soap for 10 days or so, depending on the climate. Then we put the soap in hot water to soften the surface and gently dry each bar by hand with a soft fabric. We dry the soap again for 40 days or so. We pour each bar into hot water again to soften the surface. This process is repeated for a second time. The last brushing is almost like brushing jewelry. The bars are carefully put into carton boxes, which include a special paper cushion to protect the soap from outside damage.

2. High Quality Ingredients

We select only high quality ingredients for maximum quality and those sometimes can be very sensitive and expensive. Most importantly, our Japanese deodorant persimmon is not just regular persimmon, which you can get anywhere. Our persimmon goes through an extensive process that is only performed in Japan to ensure that it is of the highest quality. It’s carefully cultivated by Japanese farmers, picked in Japan, and sent to our laboratory in Japan. In our laboratory, our permission is formulated for maximum deodorant results and tested for multiple ingredients, including ammonia, trimethylamine, and sulfide oxygen. These ingredients combat urine and fecal odor, acetic acid known as armpit odor, and nonenal, the cause of aging odor or hormonal imbalance odor.

Mr. Kobayashi, our factory’s oldest soap artisan who has been working for over 30 years, proudly says, “Our manufacturing process is very time consuming and in the past we thought about switching to machinery processes. However, that doesn’t work if we want to keep our high quality standards. They are just soap bars, but our souls are in them. It’s commonly known that handmade rice balls are tastier than machinery made balls. This same principle applies here too.”