The word is borrowed on purpose.

People ask why a house in Lahore carries a Japanese name, and it is a fair question. Usually it is asked politely. Occasionally it is asked as an accusation, and that version is fair too.

Takumi, 匠, is the Japanese word for the person who makes a thing properly. Not a hobbyist and not a manufacturer. Someone who has spent long enough on one narrow thing that the work has stopped being a job. It is not a title you give yourself there. It is one other people give you, after a while.

GENSŌ, 幻想, is the word for an illusion. Something that is not there and leaves a mark anyway.

We could have used an Urdu word. It would have been the easier story and the more comfortable one, and one day we probably will. We did not, because we wanted the word that names the standard we are trying to reach, and we wanted to be judged against it rather than against what is expected of us. A borrowed word you have not earned is embarrassing. That is the risk, and we took it deliberately.

We did not borrow a country. We borrowed a standard.

Nothing about the object is Japanese. The composition is a leather floral, black rose and iris carried on leather, which is a European idea worn in a climate neither Europe nor Japan designed for. The oils are imported, from France and Spain and Saudi Arabia, as everyone's are. The blending is ours. The bottles are filled here, numbered here by hand, and checked here. The leather patch is cut in Kasur and seated here by hand. The box is made here. Everything that can honestly be made in this country is made in it.

So the name is not a costume and it is not a disguise. It is a measurement we agreed to be held to, in public, before we had any right to it. If the work is not good enough, the word makes that more obvious rather than less, which is the whole point of choosing it.