Meet the man behind the Female University Student No.10 perfume

The web magazine Ignition had an interesting article about Daigo Igarashi, the “modern alchemist” who created the Female University Student No.10 perfume replicating the “scent of a girl”.

The aroma, one of many such smell fetish items in Japan, was showcased at the Niconico Chokaigi in April.

The fragrance was developed by Daigo Igarashi (also known by his handle/stage name “Hiroko Ashiyama”) who’s been busy researching the topic of “hacking the five senses.” It all started with a simple question: “Why do girls smell so nice?” which lead Mr. Igarashi to focus his attention on scents that are attractive to the opposite sex. One by one, he analyzed bodily secretions like sweat or fat, then mixed perfume essences whose smells most resembled those substances. The result was his sweet and little bit sweaty “scent of a girl.”

By day, Daigo Igarashi is a 25-year-old employee at an animation production company, but beneath that you’ll find a man with “an interest in human perception,” and an unusual personal backstory that includes once winning a beauty contest during a co-ed university mixer.

Beyond his interest in the olfactory side of gender, Igarashi is also a cross-dresser (see the picture below to see him in josou).

His eureka moment came in high school.

An older girl student, who knew about Mr. Igarashi’s experience with cross-dressing, asked him: “Do you want to try on my school uniform?” and lent him her uniform together with a thin shirt she used to wear underneath it.

“She was in the tennis club and was very athletic. Exactly my type of girl. She washed the shirt before lending it to me but underneath its sweet fragrance there was still a hint of her body odor. I thought to myself: ‘Ah, so this is the scent of a girl…’ It smelled wonderfully.”

And so he began to focus on human body odor as the key to making a realistic, truly sensual smell experience.

After a lot of trial and error over 2014, his perfume was finally ready in 2015: a female student in a bottle. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be on sale, though there are similar items around from the likes of Tama Toys.

Beyond just developing the perfume, he also experiments with virtual dating using all the senses.

In February 2015, Mr. Igarashi started the “Yukari Hot Springs” (orig. “Yukari Onsen”) physical experience program with the goal of “summoning” the virtual idol Yukari Yuzuki to the real world. The program is meant to be an elaborate simulation of going on a trip with Yukari Yuzuki through concentrated physical sensations, like by seeing her blurred silhouette from behind a shower curtain, smelling her used bath towel, even tasting her kisses etc.

Mr. Igarashi uses his own unique “key technologies” like perfume, special screens that can project realistic images of a silhouette, or water that tastes and smells like spit, to create an environment where people can experience Yukari Yuzuki with all of their senses.

Essentially what he is doing is moving towards creating a living doll, a female homunculus.

We’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing using technology, especially virtual reality and headsets, but we like Igarashi’s emphasis on the other senses.

Combine this with an Oculus and you might have a perfect VR experience.