Karakuri
is a doll and the model of a Japanese traditional machine device, machinery. In
addition, it was old and might call a raree show "a mechanism" for
short. Originally the works are
speech to express overall machine, but often use it when they control it in the
present age and point to the Japanese traditional machinery with entertainment
characteristics including the doll. English Karakuri means a Japanese mechanism
doll.
It is
the word "Karakuri clock" pointing at incorporating a machine in a
clock judging from the etymology, but is guessed when "Karakuri"
comes to point to the doll of the machine device when the clock which is
incorporated controled and came to call it with a clock.
It is
said to mechanical clocks having come over to Japan for the first time that
Spanish propagator Francisco XavierSaint(フランシスコ・ザビエル) gave a
clock to Yoshitaka Ouchi in 1,551. With the existing thing, "the
table clock" which Ieyasu Tokugawa was given for (Keicho era 17 years) in
1612 by then Spanish king Philip III is saved in Kuno mountain Toshogu of
Shizuoka-shi. The record that some propagators came over to Japan and gave to a
clock was left, but the oldest clock in Japan was a clock made in Spain sent to
Ieyasu Tokugawa as thanks in 1611 by Don Lewis de Velasco who is the Mexico
governor-general because there were only a few recording about clocks which
come Japan at that time.
Like
this, mechanical clocks -wadokei- was invented which included
original improvement and device to adopt Japanese climate and custom with
imitating a machine clock brought from Europe. In other words it was
propagators to have instructed the making of clock. And it is recorded when a
person called Sukezaemon Tsuda of Owari made the first clock at last. As for such
horologer, it became horologer under contract to daimyos, and, as for
the clock, it became like the art industrial art object which took in the hobby
of the daimyo. In addition, it developed as the clock which only Japan
had in the world corresponding to the unsettled time rules that were a system
at that time. Such a clock is called wadokei, and the mannendokei
which Hisashige Tanaka (also known as mechanism Giuemon) made at the end of the
Edo era is a masterpiece. It is a main reason that Japan was not able to
interchange with Europe because of a policy of seclusion by Iemitsu Tokugawa
for 300 years after that. There are methods to exchange a version that change
the memory of a method and the clockface to change the driving speed of the
machine into as various laborers who were devised to support the uncertainty
time rules into, the time every season and knows that wisdom and the technique
of then horologer developed the Japanese clocks.
Because of the change that unfixed time method to
fixed time method and the import of American large wall clocks
called "Bonbon", wadokei finished the mission. Wadokei lost
utility but it is made for some wadokei-lovers still now.
