Asako Yamakawa
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Asako Yamakawa Asako Yamakawa
Representative of YAKUZEN TOKYO Inc.
A specialist in product development built on yakuzen
Basic information
| Qualification | Kokusai Yakuzenshi (international yakuzen practitioner) |
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| School attended | Honzou Yakuzen Institute |
| Specialty | Recipe development, product development |
Profile
Born 1982. She worked on launching a D2C apparel business built on digital marketing and on in-person marketing and social work at a department store. Overwork and psychological strain led a doctor to order her to stop, and she took leave. Looking for the cause, she met Chinese-medicine yakuzen and was struck by the idea of settling the body through what ingredients do. Wishing she had known about yakuzen sooner, she decided to use what she had learned so far to face her own constitution and to build a subscription service that makes yakuzen easy to bring in. She earned the Kokusai Yakuzenshi (international yakuzen practitioner) qualification in 2020.
Yakuzen work she can take on
| 1 Product development and branding | To bring the wisdom of yakuzen to the table today, she works through everything from choosing ingredients to designing the blend. Holding together function grounded in yin-yang and five-phase thinking with a taste you can keep coming back to, she develops products carefully, staying alongside the season and the constitution. In her brand she redefines yakuzen not as special food but as an everyday choice that settles how you live, aiming, through design and words that join the surety of tradition with a modern sensibility, at something that goes on resonating quietly and deeply with the mind and body of whoever chooses it. |
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| 2 Yakuzen recipe development | She develops recipes that stay alongside seasonal complaints and the way a constitution leans, working from both yakuzen theory and how people eat now. Keeping in mind the balance of qi, blood and fluids and the combinations of the five flavours and five natures, she designs around steps you can follow in a home kitchen and a taste you can keep up. Drawing on the qualities of dried vegetables, spices and other ingredients, she shapes practical, good-tasting recipes that let the wisdom of yakuzen dissolve naturally into an everyday dish and settle the eater's body and mood from within. |
| 3 Yakuzen coaching | She works with each person's constitution, the rhythm of their life and the complaints each season brings, coaching them to bring the wisdom of yakuzen down into daily life. Rather than leaving yin-yang, the five phases and qi, blood and fluids as difficult theory, she translates them into something that works at that person's own table. She walks alongside them through choosing ingredients, adjusting how they cook and designing habits they can keep, checking the small changes in how they feel and in their mood together, growing the sense of being able to be in conversation with their own body and building, together, a way of settling food that lasts. |
Track record
Winner of a Japan Package Design Award
Bringing Japan's yakuzen closer to hand, and making it more beautiful. yakuzen tokyo is a new food brand that lets traditional yakuzen ingredients dissolve into life today, and she produced it throughout, from product design to packaging. Design that respects the bearing of Japanese and Chinese ingredients while reflecting a quiet aesthetic suited both to gifts and to everyday use was recognised with a Japan Package Design Award. It is the work that most represents raising the world of yakuzen into a single product.
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