There are many reasons to visit Matsumoto, a city at the foot of the Japanese Alps in central Nagano Prefecture.
Most visitors head there to see the 16th-century castle, one of the oldest in the country, or to bathe in the natural hot springs. But few, even among Japan’s large watch fan community, know that Matsumoto is also home to the Timepiece Museum, a bright and airy three-level exhibition space that displays around 120 of its 800 timepieces at any given time.
According to the Japan Watch and Clock Association website, the museum has “one of Japan’s richest collections of antique clocks in motion, so visitors can enjoy the movement of the pendulums and the sound of the chimes.” (And you should hear the racket when the clocks strike the hour.)
Indeed, what sets the museum apart is that many of its clocks work. “It is quite rare for watch museums around the world,” said Shun Kobayashi, the museum’s curator.
The oldest watch in the collection is an hourglass dating back to the 1400s and the newest are recent Casio and Citizen watches. Not all were made in Japan. eight other countries, including France, Germany and China, are also represented.
The museum’s original collection of about 120 watches was donated to the city in 1974 by Chikazo Honda, an engineer who was an avid watch collector.
Mr. Kobayashi said that Mr. Honda, who was born in Kagoshima, southern Japan, collected a large number of watches while living in Tokyo and that, during World War II, he brought them with him when he moved to Suva, a town about 50 kilometers (30 mi) from Matsumoto.
As time passed, he began to think about donating his watches to Suwa, but he had no watchmakers who knew how to repair antique watches. Matsumoto, however, also owned watchmakers and watch shops, and his collection ended up in the Matsumoto City Art Museum before his death in 1985.
And other citizens began donating watches, so the city decided to build the museum, which opened in 2002, and continues to financially support the facility. (There is an admission fee of 310 yen or $2).
All shapes and sizes
One day in mid-March, I boarded a bullet train from Tokyo and arrived in Matsumoto in just under three hours. It was snowing quite a bit, even though spring was just around the corner.
The black and white castle, a short walk from the train station, looked majestic under the dusting of snow flakes, though few tourists on this particular day. The five-level structure, with three turrets, is one of the country’s 12 original castles. Matsumoto is also known for Nakamachi, a former commercial district with white warehouses called kura. Craft shops, restaurants, breweries and cafes now line the streets and there is a scale museum in a former scale shop.
Even in the snow, the Timepiece Museum would be hard to miss: A five-meter (16.5-foot) high pendulum is in constant motion in front of the building, which sits along the Metoba River. The pendulum is among the largest in Japan, the museum said, and was intended to be an attraction.
The ground level is dedicated to the history of time, with displays explaining the evolution of watches. But Mr. Kobayashi took me upstairs, where the most interesting clocks are (the top floor is only open in the summer, for special exhibitions).
“This is called the old clock road,” said Mr. Kobayashi, leading the way to a room with 17 large clocks, sometimes called grandfather clocks. One of them, made in France in the 19th century, was hourglass-shaped, decorated with painted cherubs and over two meters high. (“When they’re about 150 to 160 centimeters tall, we call them granny clocks,” just a nickname, he said.)
At the end of the hall stood a bust of Mr. Honda. The collection still has the one piece he made, Mr. Kobayashi said: a rolling ball clock.
“On Mr. Honda’s watch, a small brass ball moves from side to side in a zigzag groove,” said the curator. “When the ball reaches the end of the rail, it hits a lever, which uses the power of the mainspring to change the tilt of the plate, moving the ball back in the opposite direction and advancing the second arm by 15 seconds.” Over the course of a day, the ball makes 5,760 round trips, he said.
“Sir. Honda traveled to get plans for this type of watch,” said Mr. Kobayashi, “and he did it just by looking at a plan.”
Masamichi Nakano, a watchmaker in Kyoto, said he remembered being impressed by the rolling clock when he visited the museum more than 10 years ago while he was still a student at the Omi watchmaking school in Saga Prefecture, east of Kyoto. “It was the first time I had ever seen a watch with this mechanism,” he said, “and this watch also appeared to be moving, so I spent the whole time observing its movement.”
From chandeliers to cars
Next came the Western Timepieces room, which includes timepieces made in France, Switzerland and Germany as well as Western-style timepieces made in Japan.
On the screen was what is called a reverse clock. “It was a barber’s clock, as people look at it from the mirror,” Mr. Kobayashi said, asking me to look at it using the mirror in the room so I could see the numbers in the correct orientation.
And on the ceiling was a chandelier clock, an elaborate light fixture equipped with a large clock that looked down into the room.
Other fun pieces included a flying ball pendulum clock, also known as a torsion clock, which has a small brass ball attached to a wire that spins and is covered, for no apparent reason, with an umbrella. The model was made in Japan during the Taisho era (1912-26).
Next to it was a cradle clock, made in the same period, in which a ceramic figure of a child sitting in a cradle moved up and down under the clock. Next to it was a clock in the shape of a Rolls-Royce and a wall clock in the shape of an adorable owl, made in Japan’s Showa era (1926-89).
One wall was almost covered with cuckoo clocks, several from Germany but also some made in Japan by Citizen. And the glass-encased screens contained pocket watches, some intricately set with precious stones or enamels, including one in the shape of a skull.
In Japan
The museum’s room for wadokei — in English, “watch made in Japan” — is a completely different world.
Because Japan was isolated from the rest of the world from the early 17th century to most of the 19th century, its watchmakers developed their own systems of telling time. “Days are divided into two, night and day,” said Mr. Kobayashi. “And each of them is divided into six periods whose duration changes according to the seasons.”
The room displays about 20 clocks that use the system, each with triangular bases and dials adorned with the 12 Chinese zodiac signs. each hour is associated with a sign. Mr Kobayashi said they were made during the Edo period (1603-1868), when “only rich people could afford these watches back then, like the daimyo”, the feudal lords.
(While the timekeeping system is not commonly used in Japan today, independent watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno, who lives in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, makes wristwatches using it.)
For me, an incense clock from the mid-Edo period was the most fascinating piece in the room. Invented in China, it measures time by burning powdered incense along a pre-measured path. “They are still used in temples today,” Mr Kobayashi said.
It was just another example of the museum’s working clocks, a distinction the curator said the collection has had since its early days: “For Mr. Honda, clocks are worthwhile if they work. That was very important to him.”
