Does the desk have any marquetry? Carvings? What joinery was used?

Don’t leave us hanging!

Just write a prologue with a 13C Japanese cabinet maker starting making the desk.

Then, write the epilogue with the cabinet maker finishing the desk.

Then fill in the bits between.

Would they even have desks in 1200s Japan? Seems like they did everything on the floor back then.

Desk? If anything a low table or directly on the floor.

Edit: ok, wasted a little time on this. It probably could have been the floor. Tables were likely used for shodō, but purpose built tables weren’t common for writing until the late 1300s. They weren’t “desks” by any modern measure.

I'll admit that I'm staggered by how a lot of writers absorb hundreds of little details of how trained soldiers/detectives will use little tricks to survive, observe a room, or follow patterns of criminals. Once long back, those little things like leaving a bit of pencil graphite in a door hinge to denote intruders (or, in Better Call Saul's case, placing a carbon sheet under the doormat) were extremely rare to hear about.

I don't even know who you'd ask without ending up on a list.