Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design

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.