A myriad-year clock, made by Hisashige Tanaka in 1851, with Western and Japanese dials, weekly, monthly, and zodiac setting, plus sun and moon, in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo Photo: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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The 'wadokei': the old way of measuring time in Japan

14 Comments
By George Lloyd, grape Japan

Though less used than the Western calendar, the old Japanese calendar is still used for special occasions like births, deaths, and marriages. A new cycle begins whenever a new Emperor comes to the Chrysanthemum Throne. So, we are currently in Reiwa three and World War II is calculated to have ended in Showa 20.

Less well known is that Japan also used to have its own way of telling the time. Until 1872, when Emperor Meiji did away with the lunar calendar, there were no Western-style clocks in Japan. Instead, people used wadokei (和時計 Japanese clocks). A Japanese day only had 12 hours. The length of an hour changed with the seasons, so a daytime hour in winter was sorter than a daytime hour in summer.

These clocks used numbers to tell the time, just like a western-style clock, but in the Edo era, people were more likely to refer to the time using the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, for on old Japanese clocks, each number was associated with an animal. The hour before sunrise was the Hour of the Tiger, dawn was the Hour of the Rabbit, noon was mid-Horse and dusk was the Hour of the Rooster.

The association of numbers with animals goes back to Buddhist mythology. It is said that the Buddha once summoned all the animals of the world to visit him before he left for Nirvana. Only 12 animals bothered to show up - the rat, dragon, monkey, ox, snake, rooster, tiger, horse, rabbit, sheep, dog, and pig. To thank them, the Buddha broke time down into a 12-year cycle and made each animal the guardian of a year. While he was at it, he also gave each of them an hour of the day to look after.

Old-style Japanese clocks showed the 12 hours of Edo time and the 12 animals of the Zodiac, but they often showed the phases of the moon, the days of the week, and the 24 Japanese seasons too. Not that most Japanese people had clocks. Instead, they measured the passage of time by the sound of the drum, which was struck to mark the hour at their local temple.

These days, the Japanese pride themselves on their punctuality, and lateness is considered the height of bad manners. But it was not always so. When the British diplomat Ernest Satow first arrived in Edo in 1862, he noted that "neither clocks nor punctuality were common. If you were invited for two o'clock, you most often went at one or three, or perhaps later. In fact, as the Japanese hour altered in length every fortnight, it was difficult to be certain about the time of day, except at sunrise, sunset and midnight."

Officially at least, all that ended in 1872, when Emperor Meiji abolished the old clock and banned temples from sounding the hour on drums. Instead, he brought in western timekeeping and the Gregorian calendar. His subjects were told that the solar calendar was more accurate than the lunar calendar, which required the insertion of an extra month every two or three years to match the solar year. By contrast, the solar calendar only required the insertion of a single day at the end of February every four years.

That was the official explanation, but in truth, the lunar calendar was banned because it was seen as too arbitrary, and therefore connected to ignorance and backwardness, whereas the solar calendar was western, and therefore modern and civilized. From then on, time was told by the sound of the noonday gun, fired from the Imperial Palace.

Reforming something as fundamental as the measurement of time was not a move that went down well on the streets of Tokyo, especially considering the dizzying pace of the changes the new government had introduced since the Meiji Restoration of 1868. There were riots in response to the new way of telling the time, and it was many years before people felt at home with it.

When the British novelist Rudyard Kipling visited Tokyo in 1889, by which time the country had been using the Western solar calendar for 17 years, he was surprised to find that most Japanese people still didn't refer to the time very often. "Distances are calculated by the hour in Tokyo," he observed. "Two hours from the Ueno Park brings you to the tomb of the famous Forty-Seven [Ronin], passing on the way the very splendid temples of Shiba, which are all fully described in the guidebooks."

These days, the only place where the hour is still rung out in the old way is Kan'ei-ji 寛永寺, the old temple of the Tokugawa shoguns in Ueno. While the lunar calendar is officially abolished, it is still used for some religious ceremonies.

Perhaps something like the sound of the temple drum can be detected, however remotely, in the chime that rings out over Tokyo every day at 5 pm. It is based on a song called "Yuyake Koyake" (夕焼小焼け "Sunrise and Sunset") and is used to mark the end of the school day, when children can go home.

The words are a reminder of an older, more poetic attitude to time. They go: "With sunset, the day darkens/ On the mountain, the bell of time sounds/ Hand in hand, shall we go home, along with the crows?/ Once the children are back, a great full moon shines/ In the dreams of the birds, a sky of sparkling stars."

Quote from "The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time," Anna Sherman, Picador 2019, p. 259, 296

Read more stories from grape Japan.

-- Edo era Olympics: Traditional uchiwa fans feature modern sports depicted as ukiyo-e

-- Kit lets you build Japan’s famous tea-serving automaton from the Edo Period

-- Fate/Grand Order and Seiko team up for stylish Artoria Caster watch

© grape Japan

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

14 Comments
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Very interesting article. Thanks!

8 ( +8 / -0 )

That was the official explanation, but in truth, the lunar calendar was banned because it was seen as too arbitrary, and therefore connected to ignorance and backwardness, whereas the solar calendar was western, and therefore modern and civilized. 

Sorry, but that's not correct. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's civil servants began receiving monthly salaries instead of annual salaries measured in koku of rice. Minister of Finance Shigenobu Okuma, realizing that 1873 would have 13 months if the lunar calendar were to be used, ordered a switch to the solar calendar, thereby reducing the annual budget by 1/13. So the solar calendar was adopted as a money-savings measure. Even after the solar calendar's adoption, Japanese continued to observe holidays like New Year (now called Setsubun), Tango no Sekku, Tanabata, Obon, etc., on their lunar dates.

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8 ( +8 / -0 )

It would make train and bus timetables interesting to read.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The good thing about the Japanese (Chinese) calendar and timekeeping was that people could tell roughly what date and time it was without instruments, making it ideal for an agrarian society. As the full moon always fell on the 15th of the month, it was easy to tell, by looking at the moon, approximately what day of the month it was. Similarly, with the time between sunrise and sunset being split into 12 "hours", time could be guessed fairly accurately from the position of the sun. Unlike the West, where a sundial is only accurate twice a year, using this system they were accurate every day.

On another note, the article says "the old Japanese calendar is still used for special occasions like births, deaths, and marriages" but the system of having lucky days, (Taian) etc., was not introduced until the Meiji in an effort to persuade people to buy the new (Western) calendars instead of the old type, which were still popular as they provided a guide for the planting and harvesting of various crops.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Great, so many details in this short article, thank you. Btw, you can even build such a quite unique clock yourself. They sold a construction kit with all parts at book stores some years ago. Probably widely sold out, but maybe you still can grab one here and there or by internet order, if you hurry up and make an intense search. Or they might bring a re-edition one day. It’s really a nice educational set and construction kit, equally for children or for adults , and even if you don’t like those historical details so much, still you can learn about watches / clock making and how they work inside technically.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Love. My local temple here in Kumamoto sounds their gong at precisely 5:50 daily. I suppose the extra ten minutes is a buffer zone to allow reality to settle in.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

In 1634, the Dutch were given an island, Dejima, in Nagasaki harbor. One of the first gifts the Dutch gave to the Emperor when they visited was a clock. The Emperor and court were fascinated by the clock, but as mentioned in this article, the length of an hour depended on the season (long hour in summer, short hour in winter). So craftsmen were assigned to fix this, and in no time, they did. I think of this as showing the cleverness of these people with mechanical devices. And even now, we are good at making things.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I find that Buddhist concept of time really fascinating. I was born in the year of the tiger and within the hour of the snake, I hope that doesn't make me a tiger snake.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Fascinating article.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@RonriiUrufu

Actually, the Chinese calendar predates Buddhism by about 300 years.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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