13 Of The Best Japanese Luxury Skincare Brands That Are Worth The Investment

Skincare is a highly personal journey, and what works for one person may not work for another. Ultimately, the effectiveness of skincare products depends on individual skin concerns, preferences, and reactions to specific ingredients. However, there are common characteristics that can be found in Japanese luxury skincare brands, that make them particularly effective.

Firstly, Japanese skincare brands are known for their commitment to research and development, resulting in innovative and advanced formulations. They often incorporate cutting-edge technologies and high-quality ingredients to address various skincare concerns.

Skincare is deeply ingrained in Japanese culture, and there is a strong emphasis on maintaining healthy and radiant skin. This cultural focus has led to the creation of skincare products that prioritize effectiveness and long-term benefits.

Sun protection is also a key aspect of Japanese skincare, and many products, including daily moisturizers and foundations, incorporate high levels of sun protection factor (SPF). This aligns with the cultural awareness of the damaging effects of UV rays on the skin.

Read on to learn more about the best Japanese luxury skincare brands!

Clé de Peau Beauté

A subsidiary of Shiseido, this luxury beauty brand was founded in Japan in 1982. Their philosophy is to develop innovative products by finding new ingredients and crafting luxurious formulations to create radiant skin.

Based upon decades of research and by combining cutting-edge Japanese technology and precious ingredients, scientists unlocked the power of Skin Intelligence - skin’s innate ability to distinguish between good and bad stimuli to achieve and maintain its ideal condition.

Some of Clé de Peau’s best-selling products include their Clé De Peau Beauté Correcting Cream Veil, a CC cream that immediately covers skin imperfections such as fine wrinkles, pores, and color spotting while hydrating the skin.

Another standout product includes the Shiseido Clé de Peau Beaute Voile Lumineux Makeup Base, a multi-award-winning tinted makeup base that thoroughly protects your skin from UV damage and dryness. Unlike other makeup primers, this product feels more like applying a serum on the skin, with a comfortable, lightweight, and non-greasy texture.

SK-II

SK-II originated from a chance encounter between scientists and sake brewery workers. Observing the workers' youthful hands, the scientists identified the yeast in the sake fermentation process as the key.

Through exhaustive research, the scientists spent over five years isolating the single yeast strain that held the secret to crystal clear skin – Pitera, a clear liquid rich in vitamins, amino acids, minerals, and organic acids.

This combination of nutrients works to dramatically improve the skin’s natural surface rejuvenation process. SK-II highlights normalizing the cycle of skin turnover with its original Pitera component. When this yeast-based natural formula penetrates your skin, it is said to unleash the skin’s original functions, which decline as you get older.

Their best-selling product is the SK-II Facial Treatment Essence, applied to skin after cleansing. SK-II Facial Treatment Essence contains over 90 percent pitera, SK-II's unique beauty component to renew skin, boost moisture and combat aging skin. This skincare essence also makes dark spots less visible and refines and firms skin texture.

Astalift

Distinguished by eye-catching and elegant red packaging, the Astalift brand is synonymous with exceptional quality, underpinned by cutting-edge nanotechnology. Regularly honored by leading Japanese beauty magazines, their products feature astaxanthin, a natural component. When combined with Astalift's advanced technology, these formulations effortlessly penetrate the skin, ensuring rapid and noticeable results.

One of Astalift’s best-selling products includes Astalift Jelly Aquarysta, an anti-aging facial gel-cream featuring 20nm human-type nano ceramide, which has the highest level of affinity with human skin out of all types of ceramides.

Within the latest formulation is the addition of "uncaria gambir extract", which boosts the delivery process of ceramide to the stratum corneum and helps to build high-quality ceramides from the inside, enhancing elasticity for more radiant skin.

Obagi Japan

Premium skincare brand Obagi Japan helps its customers to achieve smooth, even, firm, moisturized, resilient, and healthy skin through their meticulously developed products. As an affiliate of Rohto Pharmaceutical, a dermatology-based skincare company, Obagi Japan centers its philosophy on harnessing the skin's natural power for healthy and beautiful bare skin. Their products are heavily researched, with great emphasis placed on the mechanisms of the skin.

The Rohto Obagi C25 Vitamin C Serum is one of the brand’s best-selling products, a powerful anti-aging serum formulated with a high 25% concentration of vitamin C to effectively moisturize, brighten the skin and diminish visible wrinkles caused by aging. Additionally, this serum works to reverse cell damage on the surface of the skin and inside the cell layers.

This serum is ideal for addressing skin concerns such as uneven skin tone, improving the appearance of pores, reducing hyperpigmentation, dullness, fine lines and regaining skin firmness and elasticity.

Shu Uemura

Now part of the Loreal Group, Shu Uemura was born in Tokyo in 1928 and became the first Japanese makeup artist in Hollywood. He created cosmetic products that are known for their high quality, precision, and attention to detail, while combining traditional Japanese heritage with modern trends.

All Shu Uemura products are crafted in Japan, and they are also famous for their award-winning eyelash curler, a favorite among celebrities and makeup artists thanks to its precision and unique design. When it comes to skincare products, Shu Uemura are known for their high-quality cleansing oils.

The Shu Uemura Ultime8 Sublime Cleansing Oil has a cashmere-like texture and contains a blend of eight precious oils to effortlessly remove all makeup and impurities. This facial cleanser effectively renews your skin while keeping it moisturized, soft, smooth and with less visible pores.

Shiseido

Shiseido is probably the most famous Japanese beauty brand of all time, with a history dating back more than 140 years since its founding in 1872 as Japan’s first Western-style pharmacy, located in the Ginza area of Tokyo.

Shiseido’s extensive range of sub-brands and products includes everything from skincare products like moisturizer and anti-aging serums, to sunscreen and makeup. Among their range of premium brands, you’ll find high-end names such as Benefique, Clé de Peau Beauté, and Ipsa.

One of Shiseido’s best-selling luxury products is the Shiseido Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate Ⅲ Serum. This luxurious serum is sold approximately every seven seconds and has won more than 200 beauty awards globally.

The texture is thick but has a refreshing sensation that quickly and smoothly penetrates into the skin. By using this product for three days, you should already see noticeable results, with brighter and more resilient skin.

POLA

This Japanese skincare company, founded in 1929, aims to offer the very best skincare products directly tailored to individual needs.

POLA’s ‘beauty theory’ states that beauty includes caring for skin, mind, and body through sleep, diet, and exercise, and develops their different categories of products upon a belief that a more personal approach is more holistic and sustainable. This extends to their range of anti-aging and general skincare products, as well as their Cosmology line, a moisturizing skincare product for use in harsh environments adopted for use by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

One of their bestselling products is the POLA BA Premium Moisturizer Lotion, a powerful anti-aging repair and hydration cream that is quickly absorbed by the skin’s outer layer for firmer, younger-looking skin.

Koh Gen Do

This luxury Tokyo-based skincare brand was founded in 1986 by an actress concerned by the damage long-term makeup wear was doing to her skin. The company’s philosophy states that everything that is applied to the skin should enhance the complexion.

Koh Gen Do has developed a wide range of plant-based regenerative skincare products that are used by makeup artists around the world to help restore a youthful natural complexion even without makeup. Some of the healing ingredients commonly found in their line of products include T3 oil, a unique blend of regenerative ingredients formulated to hydrate and restore your skin’s elasticity, and Shinhojun Hakkoh Concentrate, a fermented blend of plant-based ingredients that clings to the skin to restore softness, smoothness, and elasticity.

Their most popular product is Oriental Plants Hakko Lotion-60, a gentle, deep-moisturizing lotion that is quickly absorbed by dry skin while helping to protect its natural barrier. 60% of all of the ingredients in this product come from fermented plants.

Mediplus

This pharmaceutical and cosmetics company was founded in Tokyo in 1973. Key advances in the development of their unique cosmetic skincare ingredient known as Glycenergy have helped to enhance the body’s natural self-healing ability, this includes strengthening the skin’s natural barrier, enhancing the skin’s ability to heal itself and reduce inflammation, improving skin tone, and enhancing the skin’s antioxidant capacity.

One of their best-selling products includes the Mediplus All-in-one Moisturizing Hydrating Gel, a gentle alcohol-free beauty serum made from more than sixty ingredients that restores supple skin and keeps it moisturized for up to 24 hours.

Another popular product is the Mediplus Cleansing Oil, a water-based makeup remover that hydrates your skin as it helps to remove dirt from your pores. Infused with eight separate oils, the remover helps to lift dirt and other bacteria from deep in your pores.

Sekkisei

This luxury skincare brand was established in 1985 as a sub brand of Japanese cosmetics giant Kosé. Sekkisei’s wide range of Asian botanical-based products emphasize the skin’s natural radiance enhanced by ‘bounties of the earth’, that include ingredients like matcha, noni juice, peony extract, and job’s tears extract.

The brand was created upon the concept of applying herbal medicine to skincare and started by combining several herbal ingredients to help enhance the skin’s natural appearance and condition through everyday use. This was how they developed their ‘translucency’ recipe which contains more than 100 plant ingredients to help enhance the skin’s natural strengths.

One of their best-known products is the Sekkisei Miyabi Cyclator B Boosting Yeast Extract Serum, a luxurious serum that contains yeast and other probiotics that loosen and moisturize your skin.

Shiseido Elixir

Elixir by Shiseido is a luxury anti-aging skincare brand that was created in 1983 with a focus on collagen research. It has remained one of the most popular cosmetics brands in Japan over the last 15 years.

Through more than 40 years of collagen research, Elixir products help to maintain skin, keeping it firm, moisturized, and providing a healthy glow, reflected in its lines of anti-aging, skin brightening, and pore refining products.

One of its most in-demand products is the Elixir Design Time Serum, an anti-aging beauty lotion that helps to address worries of skin sagging due to loss of elasticity, laugh lines, and other wrinkles around the eyes. The serum helps to restore the skin’s fibroblast network that becomes weakened with aging by increasing collagen density to promote elasticity.

Kosé Infinity

Another high-end skincare sub brand of Japanese cosmetics giant Kosé, Infinity’s products focus on the natural sources of skin firmness and skin problems that appear with age.

In addition to its core skincare range, the Infinity line also includes Advanced Moisture Concentrate, which helps to restore dry skin with the hydrating power of rice extract, Infinity Pure Advance, which helps to shrink aging clogged pores and restore its elasticity and hydration, and Infinity Prestigious, aimed at restoring elasticity, glow, and brightness to mature skin.

One of the most popular products in the Infinity series includes the Infinity Intensive Wrinkle Serum, which works on the skin’s outer layer to help restore firmness to loose skin and prevent and reduce the appearance of wrinkles through prolonged use.

FRMA

FRMA is a Japanese skincare brand providing consumers with hypoallergenic, plant-based skincare that reflects the brand's philosophy. They believe in harnessing the latest technology in Bacillus subtilis fermentation to create skincare products that are clean, guilt free for nature and beneficial for everyone.

In particular, FRMA focus is on consumers with sensitive skin, helping you achieve a healthier, more radiant complexion without the worry of skin irritation.

FRMA’s Hypoallergenic Organic Plant-Based Face Cream is an award-winning skincare cream that caters to individuals with sensitive skin. It uses Bacillus subtilis fermentation, a technology renowned for its low irritation and high skincare effectiveness and it also includes 12 types of moisturizing components.

Interested in learning more about Japanese skincare products? Check out this guide on the best Japanese skincare brands or browse our full collection of skincare products here.