NARS Bento Box for Holiday 2010

Traditional Japanese rouge (or beni) really is housed in sake cups, actually. Think a thin lining on the inside of the cup, which are “activated” with moisture. A moist lip brush is used to apply it, and the cup is always stored upside-down to prevent drying. Real beni is absurdly expensive, though. Think $700 to $3000 for less than an ounce of product. For that reason, even professional kabuki performers don’t wear them nearly as much anymore, and generally prefer modern stage make-ups created in traditional colors.

The production process is responsible for the high price, as only a certain species of safflower (benihana) found in Yamagata mountain is used, and only the flowers hand-picked before sunset before July are used. The flowers, however, contain 99% yellow pigments and only 1% red pigment, and isolating the red pigment to make the rouge is also no easy task.

They do have “touristy”, cheaper version of the rouge, normally housed in a painted seashell. However, it has a less nice “lustre” that real beni has, not to mention that it would probably only survive several applications before you’re out of pigments.

Ironically, Kabuki was started by a woman, and women played both male and female characters. However, several decades after that, women’s kabuki was banned from being too erotic (the fact that some of the performers were available for prostitution didn’t help) Thus, kabuki became male-only for several hundred years. Today, women are no longer banned from kabuki, though. Some troupes even only use female actors for female characters, and there has been several all-female kabuki troupes, although most of them are short-lived. Despite the fact, onna-gata (male actor playing female characters) remain popular.

A picture of the traditional beni in the cup:
http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/0012_12.jpg

A picture of high quality, treaditional beni worn on lips:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/tsubo/images/file185/17b.jpg

A picture of traditional geisha/kabuki make-up, along with the seashell beni (note the make-up brushes, which are very similar to NARS brushes, but white in color):
http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/mu_image03.jpg

TL;DR: From what I see, this is by no means a “traditional” product, although the packaging and the brush are nearly spot on, but with a modern, NARS-ish twist. The set is definitely something that would make both the kimono geek and the make-up lover in me happy, however, I don’t think I can justify the price. XD;