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At the same time that industrial production of pharmaceuticals was beginning in Europe and the U.S., Shiseido launched its own products, including Flowline Hair Tonic and Fukuhara Sanitary Tooth Paste, Japan’s first alternative to tooth powder. Unlike the powder—which was made by adding crushed cloves to processed limestone powders or baked salt and which often damaged teeth—Fukuhara Tooth Paste included a large quantity of soap. It quickly became very successful and spawned many imitations, which could be easily identified by their lack of the then-trademark Shiseido hawk. Flowline Hair Tonic, like Fukuhara Tooth Paste, bore a label with text only in English as well as the first stylized camellia flower. Western goods still carried cachet, and this Shiseido product benefited from the reduction in imports during the First World War.
Flowline Hair Tonic, 1916
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