Skip to content
The Encyclopedia of Horology

Clock type · Domestic

Japanese Pillar Clocks (Shaku-dokei)

Partially verified

A distinctively Japanese wall-mounted weight-driven clock (a form of wadokei, or 'Japanese clock'), housed in a tall narrow wooden pillar case and adapted to the traditional Japanese temporal-hour system, in which the length of an 'hour' varied with the season.

Movement & mechanism

  • Single weight descending inside the tall narrow case drives an escapement, usually a verge-type mechanism adapted from imported Western clockwork
  • A sliding pointer (or a moving dial plate) travels down an engraved vertical scale rather than hands travelling round a circular dial, tracking the unequal seasonal 'seiki-ho' hours
  • Owners commonly had to reposition adjustable hour markers, or replace scale plates, at each seasonal change to keep pace with the varying length of day and night hours
  • Some later examples used a foliot-type balance rather than a pendulum, reflecting the mechanism's descent from early European verge-and-foliot technology introduced via Nagasaki

Identification

  • Tall, narrow, freestanding pillar-shaped wooden case, quite unlike any Western clock silhouette
  • Vertical engraved scale with a travelling pointer or weight-indicator in place of a conventional round dial
  • Traditional Japanese numeral system (often counting down from nine) marking the temporal hours

Terminology

  • Wadokei — the general Japanese term for clocks made domestically to the traditional temporal-hour system
  • Temporal (unequal) hours — a timekeeping system dividing day and night each into six hours of varying length according to season
  • Shaku-dokei — pillar-type wadokei, named for its ruler-like vertical form

Known variations

  • Pillar (shaku-dokei) clocks with a travelling pointer
  • Bracket/table wadokei (daimyo clocks) with adjustable foliot weights for each season
  • Lantern-type wadokei influenced directly by early imported European lantern clocks

Collecting notes

Surviving wadokei, including pillar clocks, are a specialist field distinct from Western antique clock collecting, studied primarily through Japanese museum and academic horological literature; because the type depends on Japan's pre-1873 temporal-hour calendar, dating and mechanism should be treated cautiously in the absence of a documented example.

Related photographs

Lantern clock MET 133147
Lantern clock MET 133147 — Unattributed Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Lantern clock MET 133118
Lantern clock MET 133118 — Unattributed Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Clock, lantern (AM 14743-2)
Clock, lantern (AM 14743-2) — Henry Barrow (English), CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons file page

No confidently matched photograph of this subject has been found yet. These photographs show a closely related record, and are not examples of the type described on this page.

Sources & references

  1. Britten, F. J., Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers
  2. Specific makers and dating of individual wadokei examples are not established here and should be verified against specialist Japanese horological sources.

Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.