The birthplace of the modern wristwatch may be in Europe, but watchmakers in this part of the world have given their counterparts in the West some serious competition in recent times, as they seek to showcase contemporary Asian watchmaking to a global audience
The history of timekeeping devices goes back to when ancient civilisations first observed astronomical bodies as they travelled across the sky. Pre-dating the clocks and watches we rely on today, humankind developed a range of fascinating mechanisms to record the passing of time over the years.
Sundials originated from ancient Egypt and were later used by the Babylonians, Greeks and Chinese. Medieval Islamic water clocks were unrivalled in their sophistication until the mid-14th century. Incense clocks, which may have been invented in India, were being used in China by the 6th century. And then there was the hourglass, a European invention and one of the few reliable methods of measuring time at sea.
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But while timekeeping as a concept existed all over the world, it was in the West that wristwatches were created, even though its precise inventor is still up for discussion. Some may argue that Europe—Switzerland, Germany and England—remains the spiritual home of mechanical watchmaking.
Nevertheless, contemporary history has seen a meteoric rise of watchmakers in Asia, bringing to this time-honoured industry a fresh creativity and spirit. In making watches for Asians by Asians—this means smaller case sizes, aesthetic codes drawn from regional design languages, innovation unbridled by years of heritage and history— watchmakers from the region are establishing an identity to be reckoned with.
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Japan, the nation that birthed the most historic and notable of Asian watchmakers—Seiko, Orient, Casio and Citizen come to mind—is also where timekeeping traditions of the East truly took flight. In the 1890s, Japanese watchmakers began building pocket watches with lever escapements. According to the Japan Clock & Watch Association, in 1912, there were already 20 watch factories producing almost four million watches a year. World War II completely decimated this industry—much like it did to the watchmaking industry in Germany—but the nation’s industrialists proclaimed during the 1960s post-war boom that Japan would one day become the Asian cradle of watchmaking.
Fast forward to 2023, we now know this to be true as the stalwarts of Japanese watchmaking right down to younger boutique brands like Naoya Hida and Hajime Asaoka have created a globally respected “Made in Japan” label for haute horlogerie.