
Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design
Basement gallery displaying all seventy-four categories of Kyoto's traditional crafts on Japan's largest craft wall.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design follows the decline of the city's traditional trades, from the single remaining workshop that still hand-makes a geiko's ornate hairpins to the plunge in nishijin brocade production since the 1970s. Beneath a convention hall called Miyako Messe, it walks you past a wall displaying all seventy-four categories of Kyoto craft, every piece on it made this year and for sale. It closes by asking what buying something here might mean for a craft down to its last maker.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Nishijin Textile Center
Silk-weaving showcase where kimono fashion shows and handloom demonstrations trace a craft born from a fifteenth-century war.
Gekkeikan Ōkura Sake Museum
Historic sake brewery hall with century-old brewing tools and a spring-fed well beneath its floor.
Kyoto National Museum
Red-brick Meiji-era palace with a glass dome, built to shelter Buddhist treasures from destruction.
Uzumasa Kyoto Village
Working Edo-period film set with samurai sword shows, ninja stunts, and costumed street actors.
Fukuda Art Museum
Riverside gallery of some two thousand Japanese paintings, viewed up close through ultra-clear German display cases.
Gion
Lantern-lit lanes of wooden teahouses where apprentice geiko still hurry to evening appointments.