Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute)

What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything—it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In Making Time, Yulia Frumer upends this assumption, using changes in the conceptualization of time in Japan to show that humans perceive time as constructed and concrete. In the mid-sixteenth century, when the first mechanical clocks arrived in Japan from Europe, the Japanese found them interesting but useless, because they failed to display time in units that changed their length with the seasons, as was customary in Japan at the time. In 1873, however, the Japanese government adopted the Western equal-hour system as well as Western clocks. Given that Japan carried out this reform during a period of rapid industrial development, it would be easy to assume that time consciousness is inherent to the equal-hour system and a modern lifestyle, but Making Time suggests that punctuality and time-consciousness are equally possible in a society regulated by a variable-hour system, arguing that this reform occurred because the equal-hour system better reflected a new conception of time — as abstract and universal—which had been developed in Japan by a narrow circle of astronomers, who began seeing time differently as a result of their measurement and calculation practices. Over the course of a few short decades this new way of conceptualizing time spread, gradually becoming the only recognized way of treating time. Contents 6 Note on Names and Translations 8 Introduction 10 One / Variable Hours in a Changing Society 28 Two / Towers, Pillows, and Graphs: Variation in Clock Design 48 Three / Astronomical Time Measurement and Changing Conceptions of Time 68 Four / Geodesy, Cartography, and Time Measurement 99 Five / Navigation and Global Time 119 Six / Time Measurement on the Ground in Kaga Domain 140 Seven / Clock-Makers at the Crossroads 170 Eight / Western Time and the Rhetoric of Enlightenment 198 Conclusions 216 Acknowledgments 224 Appendix 1: Hours 226 Appendix 2: Seasons 228 Appendix 3: Years in the nengō System 230 Appendix 4: The kanshi, or e-to, Cycle 232 Notes 234 Bibliography 258 Index 274 What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything-it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In 'Making Time, ' Yulia Frumer upends this assumption, using changes in the conceptualization of time in Japan to show that humans perceive time as constructed and concrete. In the mid-16th century, when the first mechanical clocks arrived in Japan from Europe, the Japanese found them interesting but useless, because they failed to display time in units that changed their length with the seasons, as was customary in Japan at the time. In 1873, however, the Japanese government adopted the Western equal-hour system as well as Western clocks Before Western clocks came to Japan, hours shifted in length with the length of the day through the seasons; this book looks at how standard hours arrived and how Japanese life adapted to them.