Tokyo

Edo, the shogun’s city, already had clockmakers: the Japan Clock & Watch Association lists it among the centres of wadokei making, with clockmakers serving the shogunate and the lords.⁸

After the fire of February 1872 the Meiji government rebuilt Ginza in brick as a showpiece of Western building, to designs by Thomas Waters; Japanese Wikipedia says newspapers and shops selling imported goods gathered there, and it overtook Nihonbashi as the city’s commercial centre.^9, 10

Watches reached Tokyo through the foreign trading houses of Yokohama, and Tokyo dealers sold them on; Kintaro Hattori traded with the Yokohama firms from 1885, wholesale and retail.^11, 12

Clock towers were the dealers’ sign. The Seiko Museum counts more than thirty in Meiji Tokyo, mostly on clock shops, among them the Kobayashi Clock Shop tower of 1876 and the Kyoya tower in Sotokanda, with their mechanisms imported through Yokohama and Kobe.²

Hattori’s business moved from Kyobashi to the main street of Ginza in 1887, and in 1894 he bought the former Choya newspaper building on the corner of Ginza 4-chome and added a clock tower about 15 metres tall, with a Swiss tower clock imported by J. Colomb & Co. of Yokohama, by the Seiko Museum’s account.^2, 11

Making began across the Sumida River. Seikosha opened in 1892 in a disused saltpetre works at Ishiwara-cho in Honjo, today Sumida ward, and moved to Yanagishima the next year.^1, 3, 12

In 1937 Seikosha’s watch section became Daini Seikosha, with its head office factory at Kameido, in today’s Koto ward.^1, 15

Citizen’s founder Kamekichi Yamazaki was a Ginza jeweller; Nakashima Tomoko’s study records his Shokosha works at Hongo and, from 1918, at Tsunohazu, where watch movements began. Citizen built its Tanashi factory in the western suburbs in the mid-1930s and has had its head office there since 2001.^{5, 16, 17}

Orient grew from Shogoro Yoshida’s import shop of 1901 in Ueno and the wristwatch factory his firm built at Hino in 1936; Casio began in Mitaka in 1946.^4, 6

Machines came from America and Switzerland. Donzé writes that Hattori toured Waltham and Elgin in 1899 and bought from Brown & Sharpe and Waltham, and that Tokyo’s makers later bought or copied Swiss automatic lathes.¹⁸

Seikosha’s goods went out to Asia: the Seiko Museum says its nickel alarm clocks took the Japanese and Shanghai markets from German ones, and Hattori had agents in Shanghai and Hong Kong by 1905.^1, 12

In the war, work left the city. After the Kameido factory was destroyed, the Seiko Museum says, production restarted in evacuation plants at Kiryu, Toyama, Sendai and Suwa, and the Suwa plant stayed.¹

Engineers came from the University of Tokyo. Donzé writes that Hattori hired 49 university-trained engineers in the 1950s, many from the university’s former department of arms production, and worked with its professor Aoki Tamotsu.¹⁸

American forces requisitioned the Hattori building as a post exchange during the occupation, and the Japan Clock & Watch Association says watches brought in by American soldiers or smuggled flooded the market.^2, 19

Disaster shaped the city twice. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 burned down Seikosha and Hattori’s offices and ruined the brick town; in the Second World War the Kameido works was destroyed, while the Ginza tower survived with three dials cracked.^1, 2, 9

The second clock tower, finished in 1932 to designs from Jin Watanabe’s office, still stands on the Ginza corner as SEIKO HOUSE; the Seiko Museum says the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry named it Heritage of Industrial Modernization in 2009.^2, 11

Seiko timed the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, building 1,278 timing instruments, by its museum’s account; the work led to its printer and quartz businesses.²²

Factories moved out of the city: Seiko Instruments, the former Daini Seikosha, moved its head office to Makuhari in Chiba, and its mechanical watches went to Shizukuishi in Iwate.^15, 23

Tokyo still holds the head offices: the Seiko Group in Ginza, Citizen in Nishi-Tokyo and Casio in Shibuya. The Seiko Museum Ginza, which moved to Ginza in 2020, keeps the industry’s history, wadokei included.^{5, 6, 24, 25}