Born in Yokohama and educated in the UK, he retired in May 2021 as Senior Curator for Japan at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. He curated the exhibition “Japanese Studio Crafts: Tradition and the Avant-Garde” (1995) and published a book of the same title. He organized the Japanese section of the “International Arts and Crafts exhibition” (2005), after which he played a major role in the refurbishment of the museum’s top-floor ceramics galleries. His last key undertaking was the upgrade and redisplay of the V&A’s Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, for which he was lead curator.