PILLAR CLOCK “SHAKU-DOKEI” Circa 1820 Japan
M&R154a
PILLAR CLOCK “SHAKU-DOKEI”
Circa 1820
Japan
Movement
The brass movement has a going train with verge escapement and balance wheel. The lovely brass front plate has on top an indication ring with a blue steel hand, surrounded by a laurel wreath and below engraved chrysanthemum motifs. The winding arbor for the going train is also positioned here. The movement is mounted by a brass frame. The going train is driven by a weight.
Dial
The wooden dial has 13 movable brass hour ‘tokis’. These are engraved and filled with black wax to depict the hours. The Japanese characters on the tokis represent the following numerals from top to bottom: 6, 5, 4, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 9, 8, 7, 6. The decoratively pierced brass hand moves down to the left of the tokis.
Case
The case is made of veined Japanese ‘shitan’ walnut. The top is glazed on all sides so that the movement is visible. There are pierced and engraved sound frets on both sides. The front can be slid up to wind the clock and set the time. There is a drawer at the bottom for storing the winding key.
Duration 1 day.
Height 39,5 cm.
Width 4,5 cm.
Depth 6,5 cm.
Literatuur
– W. Brandes, Alte Japanische Uhren (E16).
– N.H.N. Mody, Japanese clocks (E17).
– TIJDschrift 0203 en 0204
Japanese timekeeping was very different from timekeeping in the western world. Instead of the hour having a fixed value, the length of an hour in Japan, called toki in Japanese, varies according to the length of day and night. Both day and night are divided into 6 toki, spread over the period from sunrise to sunset and from sunset to sunrise. In summer the days are longer than the nights and therefore a toki during the day is longer than one during the night. In winter this is the other way around. For this reason Japanese clocks have chapter rings with movable chapters, so that the length of the toki can be modified. There are also clocks with a fixed chapter ring. In this case the clock’s beat rate changes by moving the weights on the foliot to slow down or accelerate the clock. This is seen mainly in older clocks.
The numerals on the clocks run from 9 to 4. In Japan number 9 was holy. Each toki, 12 in total, also had its own zodiac symbol which is depicted on the chapter ring, around the hour numerals.