Skincare guru Chizu Saeki's expertise is such that her abilities have been compared to those of a fortuneteller. She can, for example, determine people's physical and mental health condition, the key experiences that have influenced them, and even their outlook on life, merely by running her fingers over their faces. Also, she has often surprised people by being able to tell them the types of skincare products they use — sometimes down to the brand.

Now just 65 years young, Saeki attributes her deep understanding of skincare to a 30-year career in the beauty industry — including stints as a beauty consultant at French cosmetics-maker Guerlain and as an international training manager at Parfums Christian Dior. But she says that what has really shaped her fundamental values on beauty and skincare has been her eventful, turbulent life.

Growing up in a dysfunctional, fatherless family in a farming village in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, she spent most of her childhood in the care of her grandparents, who raised her with affection and taught her the importance of valuing nature. Then, while living with an aunt who ran a small restaurant in Osaka, she realized that women working in such a world could barely make a living. Instead, she found they often relied on male customers, married or not, for money — as she candidly recounts in detail in her 2007 memoir, "Hitori Namida no Hosoku Yume Oi no Hosoku (The Law of Crying Alone; The Law of Pursuing Dreams)."