week 2: The evolution of mechanical clock

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.