What happens when Japan curates its aesthetic for the world?

Paris –

In Kyoto, the first clue that I was at neither an exhibition nor a party at the kickoff event for the Japan Sui Collection — a Cabinet Office-backed showcase of regional crafts and cuisine framed around the concept of sui (an Edo Period [1603-1867] concept of aesthetic refinement) — was the venue’s polite severity.

Held in November at the Kyoto Geihinkan state guesthouse, the collection’s unveiling began with heavy security at the threshold, hushed corridors and rooms that made even small talk feel ceremonial.

Guests were funneled into rooms where traditional crafts sat under museum lighting and beside the kind of choreography usually associated with embassies: small knots of people forming and dissolving on cue, introductions brokered by intermediaries and business cards exchanged with a brief, practiced solemnity.