The origin of SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence, or Miracle Water, has been portrayed in a two-minute ad by Oscar-winning director, Tom Hooper, famous for The King's Speech and Les Miserables.
Kneading cooked rice, one of the sake-making processes depicted in Hooper’s film.
Hooper's job was to give the commercial a fairy tale feel, with a little girl listening to her grandmother telling her a story about a faraway land, which was portrayed by and filmed in Japan's northern mountains. Led by an origami bird, the girl is transported there to a sake brewery where she meets old brewers with youthful-looking hands.
In the 1970s, scientists had a similar experience when they noticed the contrasting wrinkled faces and smooth hands of workers in a sake factory.
Following this observation, SK-II researchers worked on finding a beauty secret from the sake-making, which has the workers' hands in contact with yeast. The Japanese alcoholic drink is the result of a fermentation process between rice, water and yeast. Before the fermentation, a koji master kneads the cooked rice, and was depicted in Hooper's film.
Five years of research resulted in Pitera, a liquid from the filtered yeast ferment. "There are 350 kinds of yeast but Saccharomycopsis sp.SK was the elusive species chosen to obtain Pitera," said Takashi Yoshii, one of the original scientists on the research team. "Other skincare products may include yeast extract as a key component, but Pitera is a filtrated essential liquid obtained during the fermentation process."
Introduced in 1980, Facial Treatment Essence contains more than 90% Pitera to offer skin-nourishing amino acids, proteins, vitamins and minerals. SK-II came to Thailand in 2003 and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, with the Miracle Water still a best-seller.
