KOBE—An artisanal soap shop here is catering to its loyal customers throughout the country with handmade products, crafted one by one.

Kojo Tanaka, 57, has sold facial soaps made by himself for more than a decade.

He is all too aware that many consumers prefer mass-produced cosmetics available at department stores and other retailers.

Despite this, Tanaka said he is dedicated to offering goods that his patrons enjoy daily without growing tired of them, much like a beloved neighborhood bakery.  

His soap store, Sunday Savon, sits on the second floor of a building in the Sakaemachidori 1-chome district of Kobe’s Chuo Ward.

The space is about the size of three tatami mats and lined with colorful boxes of soaps.

True to its name, Sunday Savon is open only on Sundays.

CHEMIST & CRAFTSMAN

The entire operation is also solely run by Tanaka himself who explained that, for him, handling everything from development to production was “the only possible way.”

"I wanted to sell soaps of a standard high enough to be consumer-grade quality," he said.

Before prototyping the store’s signature Water-in Soap in 2012, Tanaka had 20 years of research and development experience at Procter & Gamble Japan KK, part of the U.S. entity that sells personal care items and household essentials.

He specialized in inventing foundation creams at the company formerly headquartered on Rokko island in Kobe's Higashi-Nada Ward.

Back then, his aim was to concoct “golden formulas” from a myriad combination of various chemicals that, once achieved, would make it to store shelves as finalized products.

Tanaka was fascinated by this process on the front line of cosmetics development and fell in love with it.

However, there were times when his proposed beauty products were not commercialized, no matter how confident he was in their quality.

The reasoning was the difficulty of smoothly mixing large volumes of ingredients made manufacturing them too costly and unsuitable for mass production in factories.

“I was unsatisfied with the environment as a craftsman” where even quality products faced difficulties in reaching the market, Tanaka recalled.

He decided to leave his corporate position to go independent, deviating from the typical route of cosmetic chemists building their careers by taking on a range of posts at more than one manufacturer.

Tanaka also gave himself the self-proclaimed title of “cosmetics prescriber.”

HOPES OTHERS WILL OPEN SHOPS

Of the various cosmetics he had created throughout his career of two decades, Tanaka chose soap as the pillar of his own business; it has, after all, played a vital role in skincare since antiquity.

Tanaka particularly paid careful attention so that his soap thoroughly cleanses dirt but does not leave skin too tight by dehydrating it.

A key element of his brainchild lies in the production method where the soap is not dried out to purposefully retain moisture, a sharp contrast to the manufacturing process of its more standard counterparts.

Tanaka spent an entire year crafting an aromatic soap with excellent moisture retention properties. As the soft fragrance of essential oil rises from the soap, people have noticed their skin feels more hydrated and less dry after bathing.

Satisfied with his invention, Tanaka opened his shop in 2013.

Since Tanaka manages everything alone and by hand, only opening the shop one day a week was a necessity since he would have been unable to keep up with demand if open daily. 

Soaps come in three sizes. The standard trial-size bar costs 990 yen ($6.60) for 40 grams and doubles as a face and body soap.

Tanaka said he has not changed his recipe in upward of 10 years, saying that some “patrons rely on my products for the long term.”

While the shop does have a website, Tanaka's wares remain unattainable to a larger market as he does not sell them online.

People do not seem to mind the exclusivity, though—customers from across Japan continue seeking out Sunday Savon.

Tanaka said ideally, an increasing number of specialized cosmetic stores will pop up and similarly handle every aspect—from production to sales—independently.

“Cosmetics highly regarded by someone do not necessarily prove to be good for others,” he said. “What I believe to be significant is allowing consumers to fully try high-quality items so they can find the ones that best suit them.”

Currently, his dream is to turn Kobe’s Sakaemachidori and Kaigandori districts into a locale where this ideal becomes a reality.