Even
though
Japan adopted the twenty-four hour clock in 1873, the transition of
daily life to mechanical time was slow. Few had clocks, fewer
had watches. In 1884, we can see the desire for the
dissemination of mechanical time as the papers reported events of
greater use (for example ordering
postal carriers to
carry watches in
Shimane) and developments that they hoped would lead to the
domestic manufacture of time pieces.
On the other
hand, this ambiguity of the origin and dating of the first modern
manufacture of wall clocks in Japan is ironic because it is over the
very device that measures mechanical, regular, and precise time.
Artisans did produce clocks, the \textit{wadokei} during the Edo
period, and early clock manufacture remained an artisanal trade; some
report that the Kingen-sha in Azabu, Tokyo was the first to
manufacture clocks in 1875; others ascribe the first modern clock to
Chujo (a former silversmith); and of course,
Hayashi claimed this
status for himself.
But the ambiguity is also
indicative of a changing valuation of time; we forget that time
reckoning is social, and is not some abstraction, external to human
beings. Because it is integral to society, it is also a
constituent part of what Johannes Fabian calls a ``given cultural
ecology.'' The ambiguity is akin to the tranformation of
knowledge of the past from important accounts to accurate reproduction
of verifiable knowledge. This change was only in process in 1884
[see
Shigeno].
Memory and recollection had ensured that the inherited
practices were an integral part of the present; dates were less
relevant than the story. Our quest for accuracy (through Uchida)
indicates the changing valuation that has occurred in the writing of
history; the causal, linear narrative expects a precise beginning and
founder. Chujo, the artisan was probably less interested in
claiming the status of inventor and possessing the "rights" to the
production of something other people were producing. Perhaps he
was astounded that Hayashi would pay him 1200 yen [for comparison to
the annual income of a farmer, see]. On the other hand, an
entrepreneur like Hayashi was able to make the initial part of the
transformation, becoming one of the larger modern clock manufacturers
in the Meiji period.
Whereas clock and watchmaking industry was slow to develop, when Japan officially reformed its time to the solar
(Gregorian)
calendar and the twenty-four hour clock in 1872 (effective January 1,
1873), it was actually one of the first countries to do so. Beginning in October,
Kikuchi Dairoku, represented Japan at the International Meridian
conference where Japan agreed to a unified world time with Greenwich
serving as the
prime
meridian. Moreover,
Great Britain adopted a uniform railway time in the mid-nineteenth
century after the various railways created the Railway Clearing
House to coordinate through traffic, and that time (synchronized with
Greenwich time)
became standard time in 1880. Railroads in the United States
coordinated their clocks according to four timezones on November 18,
1883, but this railway time was not put into law until March 19,
1918. Germany, following the success of Von Moltke in the
Franco-Prussian War and his impassioned speech in 1891, unified time in
1893. In short, the unification of the myriad communities of
nation-states, not to mention the nation-states as well occurred
grudgingly because of the connection of time to place. France
resisted the adoption of Greenwich time until
1911, when the official time was declared as "the mean Paris time
slowed nine minutes and twenty-one seconds. (Kern, 13)"
By the early twentieth century, abstract time, the universal time that
facilitates the flow of massive goods and soldiers became
standardized. It also, interesting, codified Asia as the East
when it set the International Dateline in the middle of the Pacific.