Culture

This gallery – founded by Elmar Weinmayr and now run by his wife, Fumie Okumura (pictured) – sits in a century-old Japanese house and specialises in contemporary ceramics and lacquerware. With the assistance of architect Koichi Futatsumata, the duo gave a minimal renovation to the wooden structure and commissioned an up-and-coming gardener to draw up a perfect garden with moss and Japanese maple. 

Known as Momak, this waterside museum started life in the 1960s as an offshoot of Tokyo’s Museum of Modern Art. Now housed in a mid-1980s building by Fumihiko Maki, it has broad interests but concentrates on 20th-century Japan and particularly the work of artists from Kyoto and the Kansai region. Exhibitions can vary, from a show about Van Gogh and Japan to a retrospective of Nara-born artist Koji Kinutani. The museum screens films too.

Kyoto residents enjoyed design and fashion in the Edo era as much as they do today. Back then, in a world without wallet chains, people used a hook at the end of a strap to carry small items such as inro (pillboxes) or purses tied to the obi belt of their kimono. Sculpted from ivory and bull horns, these small objects, called netsuke, also doubled as a functional hook and a fashionable accessory. Here you can see some 400 netsuke in Kyoto’s only existing buke-yashiki (samurai house), built in 1820.