“There are a lot of shops selling Japanese products but not kogei – fine Japanese crafts," says Choon Yeow Lim, general manager of Singapore’s Huls Gallery, which specialises in just that. Lim and the company’s founder, Yusuke Shibata, gathered the best plates, bowls and saké cups made by craftsmen from across Japan’s rural prefectures to line the shelves of their elegantly converted 19th-century shophouse showroom, which opened this September.