EGN NEWS DESK
There are a whole lot of causes to go to Matsumoto, a metropolis on the foot of the Japanese Alps within the central prefecture of Nagano.
Most guests head there to see the Sixteenth-century citadel, one of many oldest within the nation, or to wash within the pure scorching springs. But few, even inside Japan’s giant group of watch followers, know that Matsumoto is also house to the Timepiece Museum, a three-level shiny and ethereal exhibition house that shows about 120 of its 800 clocks at any given time.
According to the web site of the Japan Clock and Watch Association, the museum has “one in every of Japan’s richest collections of vintage clocks in movement in order that guests can benefit from the motion of pendulums and the sound of bells.” (And you must hear the racket when the clocks chime the hour.)
Indeed, what units the museum aside is that lots of its clocks work. “It’s fairly uncommon for clock museums world wide,” mentioned Shun Kobayashi, the museum’s curator.
The oldest clock within the assortment is an hourglass courting from the 1400s, and the most recent are current Casio and Citizen timepieces. Not all had been made in Japan; eight different nations, together with France, Germany and China, are represented, too.
The museum’s preliminary assortment of about 120 clocks was donated to the town in 1974 by Chikazo Honda, an engineer who was an enthusiastic clock collector.
Mr. Kobayashi mentioned that Mr. Honda, who was born in Kagoshima, within the south of Japan, amassed a lot of clocks whereas he was dwelling in Tokyo and that, throughout World War II, he introduced them with him when he moved to Suwa, a metropolis about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Matsumoto.
As time handed, he began fascinated by donating his timepieces to Suwa, but it surely had no watchmakers who knew restore vintage clocks. Matsumoto, nonetheless, had each watchmakers and watch outlets, and his assortment ended up within the Matsumoto City Museum of Art earlier than his dying in 1985.
Other residents started to donate clocks, too, so the town determined to construct the museum, which opened in 2002, and it continues to help the power financially. (There is an entrance payment of 310 yen, or $2).
All Shapes and Sizes
One day in mid-March, I boarded a fast practice from Tokyo and arrived in Matsumoto in rather less than three hours. It was snowing fairly closely, despite the fact that spring was simply across the nook.
The black and white citadel, only a brief stroll from the practice station, seemed majestic underneath the dusting of snowflakes, though there have been few vacationers on this specific day. The five-tier construction, with three turrets, is among the 12 authentic castles within the nation. Matsumoto can be recognized for the Nakamachi, a former service provider district lined with white warehouses known as kura. Craft outlets, eating places, breweries and cafes now line the streets, and there’s a scale museum in a former scale store.
Even within the snow, the Timepiece Museum can be arduous to overlook: A five-meter-tall (16.5-foot) pendulum is in fixed movement in entrance of the constructing, which stands alongside the Metoba River. The pendulum is among the many largest in Japan, the museum mentioned, and it was supposed to be an attraction.
The floor stage is devoted to the historical past of time, with shows that designate the evolution of timepieces. But Mr. Kobayashi led me upstairs, the place probably the most fascinating clocks will be discovered (the highest ground is open solely in summer time, for particular exhibitions).
“This known as the previous timepiece highway,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, main the best way alongside a corridor lined with 17 lengthy case clocks, generally known as grandfather clocks. One of them, made in France within the nineteenth century, was an hourglass form, embellished with painted cherubs, and greater than two meters tall. (“When they’re round 150 to 160 centimeters tall, we name them grandmother clocks,” only a nickname, he mentioned.)
At the top of the corridor stood a bust of Mr. Honda. The assortment nonetheless has the one piece that he made, Mr. Kobayashi mentioned: a rolling ball clock.
“In Mr. Honda’s clock, a small brass ball strikes backward and forward in a zigzag groove,” the curator mentioned. “When the ball reaches the top of the rail, it hits a lever, which makes use of mainspring energy to vary the inclination of the plate, shifting the ball again in the other way and advancing the second hand by 15 seconds.” In the course of a day, the ball makes 5,760 spherical journeys, he mentioned.
“Mr. Honda traveled to acquire blueprints for the sort of clock,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, “and he made it from simply taking a look at a blueprint.”
Masamichi Nakano, a watchmaker in Kyoto, mentioned he remembered being impressed with the rolling ball clock when he visited the museum greater than 10 years in the past, whereas he was nonetheless a scholar on the Omi watchmaking college in Saga Prefecture, east of Kyoto. “It was the primary time I had ever seen a clock with this mechanism,” he mentioned, “and this clock was additionally displayed in movement, so I spent the entire time observing its motion.”
From Chandeliers to Cars
Then got here the Western Timepieces room, which incorporates clocks made in France, Switzerland and Germany in addition to Western-style clocks made in Japan.
In the show was what known as a reverse clock. “It was a barbershop clock, as folks have a look at it from the mirror,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, asking me to have a look at it utilizing the mirror within the room so I’d see the numbers in the proper orientation.
And up on the ceiling was a chandelier clock, an elaborate mild fixture outfitted with a big clock that confronted down into the room.
Other enjoyable items included a flying ball pendulum clock, often known as torsion clock, which has a small brass ball hooked up to a wire that spins round and is topped, for no obvious motive, with an umbrella. The mannequin was made in Japan through the Taisho Era (1912-26).
Next to it was a swing clock, made in the identical interval, through which a ceramic determine of a kid sitting on a swing moved up and down underneath the timepiece. Near it was a clock within the form of a Rolls-Royce, and a wall clock within the form of an lovely owl, made in Japan’s Showa Era (1926-89).
One wall was nearly coated in cuckoo clocks, a number of from Germany but in addition some made in Japan by Citizen. And glass-covered shows contained pocket watches, some intricately set with gems or enameled, together with one within the form of a cranium.
In Japan
The museum’s room for wadokei — in English, “clock made in Japan” — is a totally totally different world.
Because Japan remoted itself from the remainder of the world from the early seventeenth century via a lot of the nineteenth century, its watchmakers developed their very own methods of telling time. “Days are divided into two, nighttime and daytime,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned. “And every of them is split into six durations whose lengths change with the seasons.”
The room shows about 20 clocks that use the system, every that includes triangular bases and dials adorned with the 12 Chinese zodiac indicators; every hour is related to a zodiac signal. Mr. Kobayashi mentioned they had been made through the Edo Period (1603-1868), when “solely rich folks might afford these clocks again then, corresponding to daimyo,” the feudal lords.
(While the timekeeping system just isn’t generally utilized in Japan right this moment, the unbiased watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno, who lives in Funabashi, in Chiba Prefecture, makes wristwatches utilizing it.)
To me, an incense clock from the mid-Edo Period was probably the most fascinating piece within the room. Invented in China, it measures time by burning powdered incense alongside a pre-measured path. “They are nonetheless used at temples right this moment,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned.
It was only one extra instance of the museum’s working clocks, a distinction that the curator mentioned the gathering has had since its earliest days: “For Mr. Honda, clocks are worthwhile if they’re working. That was crucial for him.”
