For those who enjoy using liquid castille soap as shampoo, Dr. Bronner’s is probably the most easily found brand in Japan. There is also a Japanese brand called The Perfect Anchor. Find information about these products in our Soap, Toothpaste and Mouthwash section.
‘ala Lehua is a Japanese brand with a concept of products that use 100% pure essential oils blended with Hawaiian kukui nut and macadamia nut oils. They make a Hair & Body Wash, along with air and fabric fresheners, body cream, hand wash, and aroma reed diffusers, all in three scents. They do not make a hair conditioner. Per customer service, they do not animal test and their lip cream and hand & nail cream are the only things they make containing animal products (honey and beeswax). The products can be ordered online.
Photo from website.
Aveda‘s customer service stated as of Sept. 2019 they have 100% certified vegan formulations for all their haircare products, and by 2021 they’ll remove beeswax, honey and beeswax-derived ingredients from all their formulations, making them all animal-ingredient free/100% vegan. Aveda is owned by Estee Lauder, which is not cruelty-free. For more on this, check the excellent website Logical Harmony.
The Body Shop is a vegetarian, cruelty-free shop with many vegan options.
Lush is a vegetarian, cruelty-free shop with many vegan options.
Lush is a very popular store in Japan with more than 150 branches in the country. It does not do animal testing or buy from suppliers that do animal testing and all the products are vegan or vegetarian. The bags say “no animal testing” in Japanese. It sells plant-based soap as well as facial masks, shampoo, conditioner and many other products. They also sell charity products, with the purchase price, minus tax, going to various charitable organizations both inside and outside of Japan. The company’s website states that about 80% of their products are vegan.
Per Lush’s USA website, the company does use palm oil derivatives in some of its ingredients. The list of ingredients using palm oil derivatives is here.
At least in the Shibuya, Tokyo branch most, but seemingly not all, of the products were labeled vegan or vegetarian, so it might be a good idea to look up the products you want before you go. They appear to specialize in highly scented/fragranced products.
Miyoshi is a company that makes a variety of solid and liquid body, baby, hand, and kitchen soaps, as well as shampoo and conditioner.
Soaps shown in our Soap, Toothpaste and Mouthwash section as having animal ingredients were listed on the website as of January 2019 as having beef tallow (along with other Miyoshi soaps not pictured there), however, that information has since disappeared from the website.
Per a phone call as of January 2019, the only animal ingredient Miyoshi uses is beef tallow/gyuushi/牛脂. They only use beef tallow in some of their solid/固形 soaps or powder/粉 soaps, as well as other ingredients like palm oil. None of their liquid/液体 soaps contain any animal ingredients.
At that time, the Q&A section of their website (now gone) also stated that the liquid soaps were made of ingredients such as palm oil and rapeseed oil. However, a few of their liquid soaps did appear on their list of items containing beef tallow, so it seems their website had some inconsistencies.
Regarding animal testing, the Q&A section of their website said:
The situation regarding our animal experiments at this stage is as follows:
1 We do not conduct animal experiments on any products. There are no plans to conduct animal experiments on any products at this time.
2 We do not assign animal testing of any products to an external organization.
3 We have not received any reports from group companies that they are conducting animal experiments.
4 We do not investigate whether or not raw material manufacturers are conducting animal experiments on raw materials used by us. There are no plans to investigate at this time.
Although they don’t have any physical stores, it’s also possible to get a lot of vegan hair care products online at iherb. Check our online shopping page for information about ordering from iherb in Japan.
Let’s move on to a brand where we were not able to identify any animal-ingredient-free products:
Botanist customer service will answer specific questions about which products are free of animal ingredients. They stated that the following products do use animal ingredients:
BOTANICAL SHAMPOO & TREATMENT MOIST/ボタニカルシャンプー &
トリートメント モイスト
BOTANICAL SHAMPOO & TREATMENT SMOOTH/ボタニカルシャンプー スムース
Although they may make some, we have not yet been able to identify any Botanist brand products that are free of animal ingredients. This is unfortunate, considering they do have many vegan options at their cafe in Harajuku, Tokyo.
