Lantern clock with pyramid stand (c. 1700)

As in the case of China, European missionaries and merchants coming to Japan since the mid-sixteenth century used precious clocks as gifts to win favours and influence important people. But Japan received far fewer European timepieces during the early modern period, which due in large part to the fact that the Japanese developed their own clockmaking tradition starting in the late sixteenth century. Most early Japanese clocks, known as wadokei (和時計) were based on the design of European lantern clocks, which were typically adapted as wall clocks, table clocks, or clocks mounted onto a truncated pyramidal stand, such as the clock above. One important step in the evolution of the Japanese clock was to alter the existing design of lantern clocks to accommodate the traditional system of dividing both day and night into six temporal (and hence variable) hours. By the end of the 17th-century Japanese clockmakers had devised the double escapement clock with one balance for the hours of the day and a second balance for the hours of the night.

Commentary. Philipp Nothaft (May-June 2019)