The exact date when Hayashi founded his factory is unclear. Mori
Chiyomatsu, a student at the Tokyo
School of Commerce, reported in 1902 that Hayashi began manufacturing
pendulum clocks in
April 1884. However, according to Hayashi's biography, he began
production
in 1882, while a history of Nagoya dates the beginning of production in
1887. Part of this confusion is over who is the first, whether it
was
Hayashi, himself, or Chujo Yujiro.\footnote{Uchida Hoshimi,
\textit{To~kei ko~jo~ no hattatsu} (Tokyo: Hattori Seiko, 1985),
pp.
216-23.
Jiseisha:
Hayashi Ichibei
Hayashi had a long history with clocks. He is descendant of a
merchant family which sold \textit{wadokei} during the Tokugawa period
and after the Meiji ishin,
Hayashi sold western clocks obtained from traders in the treaty
ports. By 1870 he had established direct ties
to manufacturers in the United States and during the 1880s he tried to
develop the machinery to manufacture his own clocks. According to
Hayashi, in 1882 he successfully developed a pinion lathe the last
machine necessary for producing the clock mechanism. Other
accounts however, suggest that Chujo manufactured two clocks, and took
them to Hayashi who agreed to sell them. Then, in 1887, Hayashi
bought the manufacturing rights from Chujo and opened Jiseisha.