Tatami

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Tatami is the smell of a Japanese rush-grass mat: dry sun-baked straw with a green herbaceous edge, sitting under temple incense. It is a fantasy accord, not an extract. No source claims a material distilled from a mat.

Scent Profile

Tobacco_hay is the spine and all three sources say it: 'a dry, straw-like aroma with a touch of sundried hay', 'clean straw', 'sun-baked straw'. It sits below the published straw note's 0.88 because tatami is straw plus other things, not straw alone. Green is the rush itself, which Premiere Peau calls 'fresh-cut rush grass' and 'green, herbaceous', and which Fantome hears as 'dried bamboo'. It is held under because every source says the green matures into something warm and golden. Smoky and amber_resinous are both the incense, and they are the facets the two formulas argue about. For Fantome incense is the point of the note, 'on the skin, the incense lights up'. For Floriography it is a smoky, balsamic base under the straw. Splitting it across the two facets at 0.38 rather than backing one build is the honest reading of a disagreement, and both carry wide spreads. Dry_woody is Fantome's cypress and the 'woody without being too straightforward' claim. Earthy is the vetiver-and-balsam base Floriography describes, and the 'sitting on a mat, connecting you to the earth' image both sources reach for. Aromatic_herbal covers cypriol's 'crisp, slightly sweet dried grass' and Premiere Peau's 'herbaceous warmth'. Sweet_vanillic is the coumarin depth, kept low because two sources insist tatami is 'not too sweet at all'. Below: sulphurous rests on one source only, Floriography's 'potato-cabbage' opening from trace sulfur compounds, which is a real formula decision but not corroborated. Mineral is Premiere Peau's 'paper, and stillness'. Animalic is Floriography's castoreum. Powdery and nutty are traces of dust and dried grain. No source names a floral, fruity or citrus facet and none is asserted here.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~20h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

A tatami mat is woven from igusa rush (Juncus decipiens) grown mainly around Yatsushiro in Kumamoto, over a rice-straw core. Nothing is extracted from it. Both trade sources say so outright, Fantome writing that 'there is no way to naturally distill the scent of the rice straw of which most tatami mats are woven'. Perfumers build toward the memory instead, and the two documented builds use different materials. Floriography names cyperone as the key component of the real smell, could not buy it, and substituted cypriol oil plus hay absolute, then added vetiver, balsams and a touch of castoreum. Fantome used a cypress processed the same way tatami is, plus incense. Premiere Peau gives hay absolute and coumarin as the closest natural approximation.

Usage in Perfumery

A heart-to-base accord for Japanese interior themes: temple, tearoom, sunlit floor. It gives a dry straw floor that reads calm rather than rustic, and it takes incense well because both builds already put incense or balsam under it. Reach for it where hay is too sweet and reed too green.