Copenhagen meets Tokyo in the clean, simple lines of Kozai designs.

Almost everything Ron Cromie sells in his shop is designed and produced in Japan, but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise at first glance. Visitors to Kozai Designs (www.kozaidesigns.com), tucked just off Granville Street at 1515 West 6th Avenue, might figure they're looking at a showroom of freshly uncrated European furniture. Noriyuki Ebina's solid-walnut Issa dining table and chairs, for example, with their clean lines and subtle curves, could almost be mistaken for Danish Modern furniture circa 1955. (Tables range from $5,900 to $7,800, armless side chairs are $1,130, and armchairs are $1,360.) It's a comparison Cromie has heard before.

"That goes back to the fact that the Japanese and the Scandinavians–the Danes and also very much the Finns–just have a shared aesthetic," he says, interviewed at the store on a bright and quiet Thursday morning. "They like things simple; they like to work with real wood, with solid woods."

Pieces Kozai sells have just that, including temperate hardwoods such as Japanese oak and American walnut. Both figure in the Ban dining table, designed by Yoshihiko Kuwabara and Keijiro Nakai for the Takumi Kohgei workshop. The Ban table and various coffee and hall tables (which are custom-built to order in Japan) boast "live" edges, which retain the curves of the tree. (Oak prices ranges from $5,400 to $6,400; walnut, $6,300 to $7,400.)

This affinity for organic shapes and warm, natural materials was what drew Cromie to contemporary Japanese furniture. He figured that pieces blending mid-20th-century modernism with Japan's time-tested minimalist aesthetic would resonate on Canada's West Coast. Cromie is in a good position to compare and contrast both countries' approach to furnishing interiors: a Vancouverite, he spent 30 years living in Asia.

That personal experience has also informed the range of lighting Kozai carries. "The key thing about the lighting is it's all ambient light," he says. "It's about mood; it's about atmosphere. In North America, people tend to be very focused on task lighting, or functional lighting, so lights have to have a purpose. But if there's any purpose to this lighting, it's really about just defining a space or creating a mood."

The realities of living and working in modern, urban Japan have brought that approach to the fore, Cromie notes. "You have people living in places that don't necessarily have a lot of natural light. You have restaurants that are underground, or 10 floors off the ground. Even though outside the cities Japan has a wonderful natural environment, in the enormous mega-cities like Tokyo and Osaka, some of the best restaurants would be in just bleak-looking buildings, from the outside. So you have to re-create the environment, and lighting becomes so important. Lighting is probably the single most effective way to create an atmosphere."

As with its furniture, Kozai's lighting choices take a contemporary approach to traditional materials. Most immediately striking are Toshiyuki Tani's Wappa pendants ($630 to $750) and floor lights ($870 to $990), which boast bent-cedar shades in pinwheel, fireworks, and ninja-star shapes, casting bold patterns of light and shadow on to surrounding surfaces. The same designer's Sen table light ($650) is composed of hundreds of thin bamboo strips; it resembles a deconstructed birdcage and emits an ethereal amber glow.

So, too, do the Light Objects of Eriko Horiki, a Japanese artist renowned for her skill in the centuries-old art of washi papermaking. Horiki's large-scale, architectural washi works can be found in hotels, churches, and other public and private spaces all over her homeland. Her elegant, fluid-looking lamps have a delicate appearance, but, reinforced with twisted-paper "scaffolding", they are actually as solid as anything else Kozai sells. (Six shapes range from $590 to $780.)

As you look around the shop's thoughtfully edited collection, it starts to look less like Tokyo (or Copenhagen, for that matter) and more like Vancouver– or at least the way Cromie would like to see Vancouver, which is a compelling vision indeed.