There are lots 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 fort, one of many oldest within the nation, or to wash within the pure sizzling springs. However 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 area that shows about 120 of its 800 clocks at any given time.
In accordance with the web site of the Japan Clock and Watch Affiliation, the museum has “certainly one 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 it’s best to hear the racket when the clocks chime the hour.)
Certainly, what units the museum aside is that a lot 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 latest Casio and Citizen timepieces. Not all had been made in Japan; eight different international locations, together with France, Germany and China, are represented, too.
The museum’s preliminary assortment of about 120 clocks was donated to 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, collected numerous clocks whereas he was residing in Tokyo and that, throughout World Conflict 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 excited about donating his timepieces to Suwa, however it had no watchmakers who knew methods to restore vintage clocks. Matsumoto, nevertheless, had each watchmakers and watch outlets, and his assortment ended up within the Matsumoto Metropolis Museum of Artwork earlier than his dying in 1985.
Different residents started to donate clocks, too, so town determined to construct the museum, which opened in 2002, and it continues to assist the power financially. (There’s an entrance charge of 310 yen, or $2).
All Shapes and Sizes
In the future in mid-March, I boarded a speedy prepare 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 fort, only a brief stroll from the prepare station, seemed majestic below 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 also be identified 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 could be exhausting 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 meant to be an attraction.
The bottom stage is devoted to the historical past of time, with shows that designate the evolution of timepieces. However Mr. Kobayashi led me upstairs, the place essentially the most fascinating clocks will be discovered (the highest ground is open solely in summer season, for particular exhibitions).
“That is known as the outdated timepiece street,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, main the way in which alongside a corridor lined with 17 lengthy case clocks, generally known as grandfather clocks. One in all them, made in France within the nineteenth century, was an hourglass form, adorned with painted cherubs, and greater than two meters tall. (“After they’re round 150 to 160 centimeters tall, we name them grandmother clocks,” only a nickname, he mentioned.)
On the finish of the corridor stood a bust of Mr. Honda. The gathering 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 wrong way and advancing the second hand by 15 seconds.” In the middle of a day, the ball makes 5,760 spherical journeys, he mentioned.
“Mr. Honda traveled to acquire blueprints for such a clock,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, “and he made it from simply 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 Vehicles
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.
Within the show was what is named 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 fitting 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.
Different enjoyable items included a flying ball pendulum clock, also referred to as torsion clock, which has a small brass ball connected to a wire that spins round and is topped, for no obvious cause, with an umbrella. The mannequin was made in Japan in the course of the Taisho Period (1912-26).
Subsequent to it was a swing clock, made in the identical interval, during which a ceramic determine of a kid sitting on a swing moved up and down below the timepiece. Close to it was a clock within the form of a Rolls-Royce, and a wall clock within the form of an lovable owl, made in Japan’s Showa Period (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 completely different world.
As a result of Japan remoted itself from the remainder of the world from the early seventeenth century by way of a lot of the nineteenth century, its watchmakers developed their very own techniques of telling time. “Days are divided into two, nighttime and daytime,” Mr. Kobayashi mentioned. “And every of them is split into six intervals 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 language zodiac indicators; every hour is related to a zodiac signal. Mr. Kobayashi mentioned they had been made in the course of the Edo Interval (1603-1868), when “solely rich folks might afford these clocks again then, equivalent to daimyo,” the feudal lords.
(Whereas the timekeeping system is just not generally utilized in Japan immediately, 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 Interval was essentially the most fascinating piece within the room. Invented in China, it measures time by burning powdered incense alongside a pre-measured path. “They’re nonetheless used at temples immediately,” 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.”
