The double cleanse ritual

The skincare regimen from the far east starts gaining international recognition for its particularity. The fundamental and primary step to a beautiful and youthful skin adopted by all the Japanese women is the face cleansing. When you see that not only women but actually every Japanese person goes through the cleansing of the face in the morning and evening, we can say that it is part of our culture.

Face Cleansing: secrets of Japanese women’s beauty and youth #3

You may have heard by now about the layering technique widely and commonly adopted by all Japanese women. It consists in applying one after the other, multiple skincare products on the face and I will post later about this key topic in Japanese beauty routine.

But before any layering, the skincare ritual starts by cleansing the face. This primary step is considered as basic and mandatory in the Japanese beauty culture. Men do wash their face as well.
The general cleansing protocol for the evening is called double cleanse and includes 2 steps:

1. Makeup removal

Makeu-up removal with either a cleaning oil or a milk: this step sounds obvious but the difference with the western approach is that it is differentiated from cleansing the face. The make-up cleansing oil or milk allows only to remove the actual traces of all make-up, such as foundation but also hard-to move mascara or eye liner. Japanese women like to use the cleansing oil the most. Indeed its water soluble formula allows to capture perfectly all the make-up, based on the mechanism of emulsification;

• You generally apply the oil directly on a dry face.
• Then gently massage the whole face in circular movements insisting on hard to move make-up area.
• Add just a little water to let the whole oil emulsify. It is important for a proper make-up removal not to rinse off straight away. This emulsification step is key.
• Once it is well emulsified (the oil turns white when emulsified) finally rinse off with a lot of water.

Shu Uemura Cleansing oils

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2. Face cleansing

Although the Shu Uemura cleaning oil, the worldwide best seller, doesn’t need any face cleansing step after, due to its formulation allowing to remove make up and impurities all at once, the face cleansing as the 2nd step is widely adopted by women. The face cleansing has the objective of removing dirt, impurities and sebum.
A traditional soap for face, for the eldest or men, or a foaming cleanser for the others is used for that step. Obviously in the morning, there is no need of going through the step 1.
With this face cleansing part, the important point is to create a rich lather, just like in the ritual of washing the hair as I explained in a previous post. You should really be careful not to rub vigorously your face or create any sort of friction in order to not damage your skin. Also make sure to rinse abundantly, otherwise it can lead to skin troubles.

Personally I don’t use any product at all in the morning but still wash my face with only water as I like to not remove completely the natural protective film of sebum created during the night.

The washing ritual is more critical in the evening; the properly purified skin that has received the layering of products that we will be talking about later, can regenerate fully during the night. Going to bed without the double cleanse routine beforehand, especially without removing the make-up is said in Japan to be the worst thing to do to your skin: the ageing of your skin is accelerated and leaving the pores clogged with makeup and dirt will be the cause of many skin troubles.

So even after a long night out, think about the future of your skin, always cleanse your face before sleeping!