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I feel incense is a dying art, which is unfortunate, because it has been such an integral part of numerous cultures since ancient times.

Today I am going to be reviewing Shoyeido’s Gossamer (Kasumi) low-smoke incense sticks.

I received these in a low-smoke incense sample assortment which contained a stick of each fragrance of low-smoke incense which Shoyeido offers.

The idea of a low-smoke incense stick is a novel one, as obviously incense produce smoke. Japanese incense sticks have always been relatively lower-smoke than many other varieties of incense. Particularly Indian and Tibetan incenses are quite heavy in nature. I’m not sure what they use as the base for this in order to make it low-smoke. I may contact Shoyeido and ask them at a later date. Low-smoke incense sticks are often considered healthier, and are also less likely to set off older smoke alarms.

Incense Review

Anyways, I lit this incense stick about 10 minutes ago. I always like to burn incense during the exact moment I am doing reviews. I feel it’s important and helpful to have the fragrance fresh in your mind while describing it.

This is an interesting incense stick. The fragrance seems hard to describe. It almost has a cooling sensation, which I attribute to camphor. It’s one of the first things I noticed. After that, there is something warming in there. I believe I smell ginger and cinnamon as some of the key notes. There is the obvious sandalwood base as well, but to me, the camphor, ginger, and cinnamon take the stage. There is something floral which I can’t seem to pinpoint. It’s honestly a very strange incense. It’s almost as if there is a sort of yin and yang battle going on with this incense, as the smell seems to ‘ebb and flow’ between warm and cool fragrance notes.

It definitely does seem to be low-smoke, creating less smoke than Shoyeido’s other incense sticks. However, it still does produce a decent amount of smoke. I wouldn’t consider it to be ‘smoke-free’, per se.

I really enjoyed experiencing this low-smoke incense from Shoyeido and I believe most of you will too.

It has a high-quality fragrance which isn’t at all polarizing.