Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan

Making Time Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University The studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of signifi cant research on modern and contemporary East Asia. Making Time Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan YULIA FRUMER The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2018 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 51644- 8 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 52471- 9 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Frumer, Yulia, author. Title: Making time : astronomical time measurement in Tokugawa Japan / Yulia Frumer. Other titles: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Identifi ers: LCCN 2017015017 | ISBN 9780226516448 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226524719 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Time measurements—Japan—History. | Japan—History— Tokugawa period, 1600–1868. Classifi cation: LCC QB213 .F795 2018 | DDC 529/.709520903—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015017 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 ( Permanence of Paper). CONTENTS Note on Names and Translations / vii INTRODUCTION /1 ONE / Variable Hours in a Changing Society / 19 TWO / Towers, Pillows, and Graphs: Variation in Clock Design / 39 THREE / Astronomical Time Measurement and Changing Conceptions of Time / 59 FOUR / Geodesy, Cartography, and Time Measurement / 90 FIVE / Navigation and Global Time / 110 SIX / Time Measurement on the Ground in Kaga Domain / 131 SEVEN / Clock- Makers at the Crossroads / 153 EIGHT / Western Time and the Rhetoric of Enlightenment / 181 CONCLUSIONS / 199 Acknowledgments / 207 • Appendix 1: Hours / 209 Appendix 2: Seasons / 211 • Appendix 3: Years in the nengō System / 213 Appendix 4: The kanshi , or e- to, Cycle / 215 • Notes / 217 Bibliography / 241 • Index / 257 A gallery of color plates follows page 152. NOTE ON NAMES AND TRANSLATIONS Japanese names are customarily written last name fi rst. Conventionally, when only one name is used, it is typically the last name. Nevertheless, this pattern is often broken in historiography of the Tokugawa period due to the abundance of professional or political lineages, all members of which adopted the same last name. To distinguish between members of the same lineage, scholars usually refer to Tokugawa- period fi gures by one of their pseudonyms. This book follows historiographic convention and refers to people by the names by which they are most commonly known. When there is no established convention, this text follows the customary abbre- viation of full names to last names alone. With a few exceptions (where customary translations are available), most of the title translations in this book are the author’s own. As literal translations often result in convoluted or incomprehensible English, the author prioritized substance over literal precision in translating the characters. The names and titles in original characters are provided in the bibliography. Introduction Hunting for exotic curiosities at local markets, Western visitors to Meiji Japan (1868– 1912) encountered some particularly strange objects. Obvi- ously mechanical, they were marked with Japanese characters, and though one could guess that they were measuring devices, it was not always clear what they were supposed to measure. Some of them resembled Western clocks, but others looked more like devices designed to measure length or height. Westerners bought them to serve as elegant objets d’art that exhib- ited “oriental” qualities— lacquered wood, gilded panels, and exotic writ- ing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, British collectors began to place these devices in public exhibitions. But to the collectors’ amazement, when they invited Japanese embassy offi cials to share their knowledge of these artifacts, the diplomats claimed that they had never seen such objects before and were surprised to discover that they had come from Japan.1 The objects in question were antique Japanese clocks. Born of the en- counter between European timekeeping technology and Japanese temporal practices, these clocks were highly valued throughout the Tokugawa (or Edo) period (1600– 1868).2 Rendered obsolete by the calendrical reform of 1873, which marked the adoption of Western methods of timekeeping, they were quickly forgotten by all but a few connoisseurs of Japan’s tech- nological history. According to one European collector, by the beginning of the twentieth century Japan had become “largely denuded of these interest- ing objects; and even the cultivated Japanese appeared to be ignorant of the existence of these relics of pre- revolution days.”3 Mechanical timekeeping technology was fi rst brought to Japan from Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century. Yet despite the general en- thusiasm mechanical clocks evoked, they were deemed useless because they failed to measure time in units that fi t the local timekeeping system. 2 / Introduction According to this system, the day was divided into twelve “hours,” six for daytime and six for nighttime. Because the durations of light and darkness change throughout the year, the length of these hours changed as well. So, at the height of summer, daytime “hours” lasted about two and a half modern hours each, while in the winter the situation was roughly reversed. It was only around the equinoxes that all twelve hours were more or less the same length. With seasonal changes in mind, sixteenth-century Japanese did not fi nd the equal hours measured by mechanical clocks to be a use- ful to measure time.4 Yet despite their rejection of European timekeeping conventions, they did fi nd uses for Western mechanical timekeeping techno logy. In order to make mechanical timekeeping technology usable, Japanese artisans thoroughly modifi ed the appearance and mechanism of European clocks. Adapting foreign technology to serve local conventions, they came up with designs that signifi cantly differed from their European prototypes, and sometimes did not resemble European timepieces at all. This reaction to the arrival of new timekeeping technology and the practices associated with it could not be more different from what hap- pened some three hundred years later. In 1873 the Japanese government decisively discarded the country’s existing temporal system in favor of the Western one, in which the day is divided into twenty- four equal hours, each divided into sixty minutes that are in turn divided into sixty seconds. This change made all earlier Japanese clocks obsolete, and forced their owners to switch to European clocks and watches. This book explores the profound shift in attitude toward foreign technology that occurred between the sixteenth century, when European devices arrived in Japan, and 1873, when Japan fi nally abandoned its traditional temporal system. Before the nineteenth century, I argue, time measurement was understood to be a human-made and agreed- upon praxis— a convention. In this framework, several different methods of measuring time coex- isted and could be employed for different purposes. However, engagement with Western astronomical calculation and observation methods over the course of the eighteenth century brought about a new way of conceptual- izing time measurement. The new notion dictated that the time measured by astronomers was a mathematical expression of celestial motion, and therefore it was not merely a time, but the Time (with a capital T). The astronomical timekeeping system thus came to be seen as the sine qua non of Time measurement, a model for all timekeeping practices to follow. And since, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Western temporal conventions and timepieces had become associated with astronomical time measurement, they were now seen as desirable—even inevitable. Introduction / 3 By documenting shifts in the ideas, practices, and technologies con- nected to time measurement in Japan over roughly three hundred years, this book offers a fresh interpretation of the ways societies evaluate and attach meanings to technologies. It shows how one society’s conceptual- ization of timepieces evolved as a result of transformations in the broader range of associations related to the measurement of time. Once a vari- ety of calculation methods, artifacts, and modes of visual representation transformed the associations with time measurement, the understanding of what it meant to measure time changed as well. Foreign technologies and foreign methods were thus accepted or rejected not because they more or less adequately addressed practical needs, but on the basis of how well they fi t a prevailing set of norms and assumptions. In order to adapt foreign timekeeping technology to their needs, Japanese users fi rst needed to integrate it into their web of associations related

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