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Timon Screech is lecturer in the history of Japanese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He is the author of several articles on Edo Period culture, and of two books, O-Edo Ijin Orai (1995) and The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan (1996). In the 1995-1996 academic year, he was an Asahi Fellow at Keio University. All translations in this article are by the author.
Clock-making and automaton-making were considered parts of a common profession in Europe. Pierre Jacquet-Droz, a Swiss automatonmaker living in l8th-century London, was one of the great precision machine makers of his time, and his name survives today as a watch company. Similar mechanisms called k.arakuri existed in Edo Period (1603-168) Japan. They were weird and wonderful devices, ticking away with springs and spinning wheels, delighting and confusing onlookers in Japan, just as their counterparts did in Europe. Their musical angels, singing birds and moving landscapes were fascinating means to mark the passing of time. Those who watched never knew exactly how the pieces worked; they were left with a sense of wonder at the seemingly magical quality of the movement. The insides were canny and opaque. The human heart is like this, too.
The complexity of clockwork could not fail to at once confuse and impress. English and French clocks sent to China were amazingly elaborate and complex. Some of those clocks were brought to Japan, where they were admired, copied and adapted. Much has been written about the indigenous clocks of Edo Japan, and there were indeed many unique features of Japanese clocks, although they were mechanically derivative. But beyond their differences and similarities is the more interesting notion of the clock as metaphor. This article is concerned with the paradigm-shifting power of clockwork, rather than the mechanisms.
One of the most important revolutions provoked by the introduction of the mechanical clock to Japan was a change in the notion of time itself. The people of Edo had been accustomed to the sound of temple bells to indicate time. But unlike bells, which sounded only intermittently, clocks registered temporal progression continuously. They were also visual, plotting time by the clearly observable rotation of hands on a...