Shiseido was founded in 1872 in Japan as Japan’s first Western pharmacy.  The founder Arinobu Fukuhara was working as a chief pharmacist and was displeased with the medicine available in the market then. In 1872, he started a Western-style pharmacy in Japan, basing on the philosophy of ‘ taking everything and anything good in this world and use it to create new things’.  The name Shiseido was chosen from a passage in I Ching meaning, Do (堂): “house of” Shi Sei (資生): “where everything is born.” It translates to: “Praise the virtues of the earth, that is where anything and everything is born from”.

Shiseido opened its first research centre in Japan in 1916 and expanded its research centres to other countries such as China, Thailand, USA, and France. Shiseido has become an authority on skin and skincare and a leader of basic research in dermatology. Shiseido in Malaysia is available in the big retail shops such as Aeon, Metrojaya, Parkson and Isetan.