REVIEWS
"Will fascinate readers . . . . Making Time is the most comprehensive treatment of Japanese timekeeping to date, but it is not a specialized book for horologists interested in detailed information about clock mechanisms and makers. Frumer’s text is addressed to historians of science, technology, and Japanese culture. She deftly shows that technology is not just about practical needs; it is shaped by a society’s values and activities. . . . Frumer's analysis has reach far beyond Japan."
— Physics Today
"A superb study that is narrow in focus but broad in its implications. . . . This book is a remarkable achievement. The thesis is original and compelling, and Frumer deftly integrates an analysis of technological diffusion with a discussion of time as a social construct. She connects detailed explorations of clock mechanisms and astronomical calculations with insights into lived experience. This is a genuine contribution to our understanding of early modern and Meiji Japan."
— American Historical Review
"Yulia Frumer is an engaging narrator. . . . [whose] sophisticated analyses add valuable and original insight into the early development of astronomical sciences in Japan. . . . Making Time is pioneering in employing a cultural historical approach to demonstrate how Japanese astronomers interpreted and attached meanings to Western ideas, texts, clocks, instruments, and other materials. . . . The book is well furnished with clear color photographs of Japanese clocks as well as many black-and-white illustrations that might not only attract the reader but also help support Frumer’s analysis."
— Isis
"While it provides an exceptionally rich and focused case study grounded in careful research with Japanese documents and material objects, Frumer’s book also offers a critical analysis of what it is that we’re doing when we study the relationship between societies and technologies that has potentially far-reaching consequences well beyond the history of Japan."
— New Books Network
"Making superb use of the material evidence, Frumer undertakes a procedure analogous to the reverse-engineering practiced by Tokugawa clockmakers themselves, unpicking the logic behind puzzling pieces of an alien material culture. . . . Frumer’s substantive claims are always compelling, and the details she unearths are of endless interest. . . . [Her] penetrating analysis of astronomical time illuminates one crucial element of that complex time-scape without beginning to exhaust it. This reviewer, for one, looks forward to seeing what new questions it will prompt—and what will issue next from the talented author of Making Time."
— The Journal of Japanese Studies
"I wish the book had existed twenty years ago... Frumer is intent on bringing early modern Japan out of the shadow of the modern period, a task that remains warranted and needed... Frumer’s monograph is an excellent early step in understanding time reckoning in Japan prior to the modern period."
— Monumenta Nipponica
“Setting out to explore the genesis of astronomical time in Japan’s Tokugawa period (1600–1868), Yulia Frumer’s Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan succeeds brilliantly in filling a gap in the world history of time and science for an English-speaking audience.”
— Kronoscope
“Brace yourself for a most thought-provoking journey through time in premodern Japan. This book forces historians of science and technology to think more deeply about what they think they already know about modernity and time practices before and while the global system of commerce and exchange tightened its grip in the nineteenth century. Historically brilliant and beautifully written, Frumer unfolds how and why astronomical time-space relationships came to matter in Tokugawa and Meiji scientific minds and public life. I literally felt the ambiguities of time come to life in her rich account, in relative and absolute terms. One emerges from reading it inspired and positively provoked, realizing the lived truth of Einstein’s theory: time indeed flows at different rates for different systems.”
— Dagmar Schäfer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
“Well-researched and original in its interpretation, this history of timekeeping in early modern Japan introduces an aspect of Japanese culture and knowledge production that has been only scantly covered in traditional scholarship. Making Time is a major, outstanding contribution to both East Asian cultural history and the history of science.”
— Federico Marcon, Princeton University
"Yulia Frumer’s monograph is a welcome addition to the English-language scholarship on timekeeping traditions and material practices in Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868)...Frumer demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the cultural valences of measuring and embodying time and focuses on how foreign technology – European and hence “Western” and “foreign” – was adapted and acculturated to meet the specific needs of individuals and society in the Tokugawa period."
— Nuncius
"Frumer brings life to how intellectuals and craftsmen thought about time and timekeeping. Well re-searched and convincingly argued, Making Time is a significant contribution to the social and technological histories of early modern Japan. It is a welcome addition that will likely inspire further research on the subject."
— Technology and Culture
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0001
[Tokugawa;associations;conceptual change;time measurement practices;astronomers;conventions]
How do people form concepts of time, and how do they decide which timekeeping practices to use? The Introduction establishes that Japan—and particularly Japan during the Tokugawa period—offers an exceptional opportunity to explore these questions. Tokugawa Japanese invented mechanical clocks that measured time according to the variable hours system, and effectively used that system in a highly urbanized and rapidly industrializing environment. Later, they were unique in developing a preference for Western timekeeping conventions without being forced to do so by practical necessity, political pressure, or colonial dominance. The Introduction proposes that Tokugawa Japanese grew fond of the Western timekeeping system because it appealed to a new concept of time that emerged in relation to new practices of time measurement. Maintaining that people form concepts and judgments out of the numerous associations they acquire throughout their life, the Introduction traces changes in the conceptualization of time to Japanese astronomers’ evolving associations with their time measurement practices. The Introduction further explains how, despite being a small group, Tokugawa astronomers were influential in shaping general attitudes towards time and consequently in inspiring the calendrical reform of 1873, during which Japan adopted Western timekeeping conventions. (pages 1 - 18)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
One. Variable Hours in a Changing Society - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0002
[variable hours;Tokugawa;timekeeping;urbanization;regulation;synchronization;work patterns;convention;habits]
Chapter 1 explains the variable-hour system and chronicles the development of timekeeping practices during the Tokugawa period. Challenging the common characterization of the variable-hour system as “natural,” it argues that its use required more - rather than less - regulation than an equal-hours temporal system. Using the variable-hour system, Tokugawa society had already instituted synchronized public timekeeping and the assignation of the whole country to one time zone. In the seventeenth century, Japan witnessed rapid urbanization, with the city of Edo growing from about twenty thousand to more than a million people in less than one hundred years. Developing mining industries fueled both local economies and international trade, positioning Japan within a global economic network despite its ban on international travel. The proto-capitalist and proto-industrial nature of mid-nineteenth-century business enterprises created work patterns quite similar to those of the early Meiji period. The variable-hour system survived all these changes because it was maintained out of convention. Changing social needs did affect modes of timekeeping and the use of timepieces, but the changes were introduced within the confines of the variable-hour system, without requiring its overhaul. (pages 19 - 38)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Two. Towers, Pillows, and Graphs: Variation in Clock Design - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0003
[Japanese clocks (wadokei);clepsydras;gnomons;incense clocks;clock design;dials;clockwork mechanism;imagery;association;habits]
Chapter 2 focuses on the evolution of the devices that kept time according to the variable-hour system. Mechanical clocks were first brought to Japan in the sixteenth century, but since they measured time in equal units they were of limited use. Rather than instigating a revolution in timekeeping practices, however, the clocks themselves were transformed to fit local needs. After the expulsion of Westerners from Japan in the seventeenth century, Japanese ironsmiths modified the dials and the mechanisms according to their own understanding of timekeeping essentials, coming up with curious and original designs, retrospectively dubbed wadokei, or “Japanese clocks.” Inspired by their existing habits of timekeeping and representing time, Japanese artisans found not one but numerous ways to adapt European clockwork to measure variable hours. Relying on the existing imagery, conventions, and bodily practices associated with timekeeping, they created designs that not only answered the need to measure time in variable units, but also did so in ways reminiscent of clepsydras, gnomons, and incense clocks. (pages 39 - 58)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Three. Astronomical Time Measurement and Changing Conceptions of Time - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0004
[astronomy;Shibukawa Shunkai;Jesuit astronomy in China;Asada Goryu;Kansei calendrical reform;Takahashi Yoshitoki;Hazama Shigetomi;pendulum clock (Suiyokyugi);trigonometry;diagram drawing]
Chapter 3 explores changes in conceptions of time by examining the work of Tokugawa-period astronomers. It begins in the seventeenth century with the astronomical methods of Shibukawa Shunkai, follows the introduction of Jesuit astronomical texts from China in the eighteenth century, and describes the rise of the Asada Goryu school of astronomy, which culminated in the Kansei calendrical reform led by Takahashi Yoshitoki and Hazama Shigetomi. Focusing on the development in astronomers’ practices, this chapter shows that astronomers’ conceptions of time were neither value-neutral nor obvious. Rather, individual astronomers constructed their notions of time based on a multitude of associations they gained from practices dependent on time-measurement, such as observation and mathematical calculation. As astronomers’ methods changed, so did the cognitive basis for their perceptions of time. The use of spherical trigonometry, sextants and pendulums, and calculation using diagrams led to an understanding of measured time in terms of celestial arcs and angles. Furthermore, as astronomers’ practices came to include elements of Western astronomy, the notions of time they formed came to resonate with those seen in European astronomy — despite the fact that Japanese astronomers did not read European languages and could not converse with European colleagues. (pages 59 - 89)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Four. Geodesy, Cartography, and Time Measurement - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0005
[Ino Tadataka;Takahashi Kageyasu;Philipp Franz von Siebold;geography;Asakusa observatory;surveying;longitudes;maps;nation]
Focusing on the mapping project undertaken by Ino Tadataka at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Chapter 4 shows how new approaches to thinking about the measurement of time were translated into the worlds of geography and surveying. Ino initially set out on his surveying mission to solve an astronomical problem, which made it necessary for him to make both celestial observations and terrestrial measurements. Using a pendulum clock (Suiyokyugi) to take astronomical measurements along his surveying route, and comparing this data with that gathered in the Asakusa observatory, Ino created a link of time that connected various distant places in Japan. After Ino’s death, his assistant, Takahashi Kageyasu, projected the data onto paper, producing maps that were not only highly accurate but also represented a whole new cartographic genre. These new maps featured a Japan unified by observed celestial phenomena, manifested in longitudes measured in time. As such they represented the idea of a geographically-determined nation, such that when Kageyasu shared the maps with the German naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold the act was deemed to be treason, and Kageyasu lost his life. (pages 90 - 109)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Five. Navigation and Global Time - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0006
[Honda Toshiaki;navigation;longitude;chronometers;British nautical almanacs;Western time]
Chapter 5 shows how astronomical concepts of time measurement encouraged navigational aspirations during a period when open-sea voyages were forbidden. It also shows how one particular kind of time used by Japanese astronomers—Western time measured by chronometers—came to be seen among scholars as the ultimate kind of time. The chapter explains how astronomers’ use of British nautical almanacs inspired contemplation of open-sea voyages, and describes how eminent scholar Honda Toshiaki proposed determining longitude at sea by means of time measurement with a Western chronometer. Using the data in British nautical almanacs, written according to the Western convention, Japanese astronomers gradually began seeing the Western approach to time measurement as not just one among multiple possible conventions, but as a mathematically-derived practice that revealed a fundamental truth about reality. If the maps of Ino Tadataka manifested the idea that time was not just a convention but was rooted in the structure of the universe, the developments surrounding navigation propelled this idea one step further—it now appeared that Western time offered the most accurate representation of that structure. (pages 110 - 130)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Six. Time Measurement on the Ground in Kaga Domain - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0007
[Endo Takanori;Kaga;Kanazawa;infrastructure;representation of physical reality;aesthetic theory;castaways;Russian clocks;global map]
Chapter 6 demonstrates how ideas about time measurement that originated in astronomical practice and spread in early nineteenth century Japanese society through surveying and navigation manifested in individuals’ perceptions of time. The chapter does so by focusing on the work of one individual—Endo Takanori. Takanori was born into a high-ranking samurai family, in line to become an infrastructure minister of the Kaga domain, which roughly overlaps with present-day Kanazawa. In preparation for his vocation, he studied astronomy and surveying, and indirectly learned from another Kaga-born scholar: Honda Toshiaki. Takanori absorbed the notion of time as rooted in celestial motion and geographic location, and concluded that human measurement of time had to correspond with physical reality. Later in life he became interested in Western drawing methods and developed an aesthetic theory, according to which Western-style depiction offered a superior representation of physical reality because it was based on the same principles as astronomy and surveying. And finally, his interrogation of castaways who brought him a Russian clock led him to contemplate Japan’s place on the global map. (pages 131 - 152)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Seven. Clock-makers at the Crossroads - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0008
[clock-makers;Tanaka Hisashige;automata (karakuri);model of Buddhist Universe (Shumisengi);Myriad Years Clock (Mannendokei);clock dials;timekeeping]
Chapter 7 describes how clock makers contributed to the dissemination of astronomical notions of time measurement. Making astronomical instruments—clocks, compasses, theodolites, and sextants — they had to learn about astronomers’ goals and practices. In the process, clock makers absorbed astronomical perceptions of time measurement, which they then embedded in the clocks and automata (karakuri) they made for the general public. Particularly instrumental among them was the famous automata master Tanaka Hisashige. Hisashige built clockwork models of the Buddhist universe (Shumisengi), and created a multi-faceted Myriad Years Clock (Mannendokei) in which different kinds of time were displayed on six different dials, all driven by one mechanism and connected to a planetary model that showed the apparent motion of the sun and moon above Japan. Such devices communicated the idea that clocks were not only practical but also reflected the workings of the universe. Other clock makers explained to the public the principles behind Western clock dials. Modifying imported devices for Japanese consumption, clock makers were the first to understand how to convert between European and Japanese conventions of timekeeping. They then published guides that explained how to use European clocks and how to translate between Japanese and Western hours. (pages 153 - 180)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Eight. Western Time and the Rhetoric of Enlightenment - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0009
[Meiji;modernization;Westernization;enlightenment;progress;global;calendrical reform]
Chapter 8 describes how astronomical notions of time-measurement, and astronomers’ use of Western timepieces, came to be seen as a model for all timekeeping. Scholars who aimed to reform Japanese society increasingly saw the Japanese calendrical system as “ignorant” and demanded a more “enlightened” one. At the same time, they came to regard astronomy as the epitome of mathematical rationality, and identified astronomical devices, such as Western marine chronometers, with progress and enlightenment. For those scholars, Western time was no longer just one of the possible kinds of time, appropriate for a particular goal. Rather, it became the Time. With the onset of the Meiji period, astronomy, geography, and navigation also became associated with the new ideals of modernization and Westernization. Thus, when people in Japan began evaluating the Western system of timekeeping as “better,” they did so not because it better answered their practical needs, but because they identified it with a range of positive associations such as “navigational use,” “global commerce,” and “astronomical tools.” Identifying the Western system of timekeeping with progress, Meiji reformers proposed to use it instead of the existing temporal system, and initiated the calendrical reform of 1872. (pages 181 - 198)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Conclusions - Yulia Frumer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226524719.003.0010
[Time;knowledge transfer;non-verbal;cultural cues;life experience;associations;concepts;technology transfer]
The illusion of uniformity suggested by dictionary definitions of Time—with a capital T—conceals the vast diversity of individual conceptions of time. Exploring the development of conceptions of time in Japan, we learn that the modern concept of Time is just one possible way of conceptualizing time, and that this very concept, too, emerged in the very particular historical circumstances of nineteenth-century Japan. Looking at how nineteenth-century Japanese arrived at a concept of time as Time, we can also derive a more general conclusion —thathumans do not adopt concepts by learning definitions but rather form their own conceptions out of the vast array of associations they accumulate through their life. The notion that all concepts are rooted in individual life experience bears several important implications. First, our actions are informed not only by our goals and needs but also by associations that form the basis of our concepts and judgments. Second, the transfer of knowledge and technology cannot happen without the recreation of similar associational bases. And finally, knowledge spreads not only with words but also through non-verbal means that embed cultural cues. (pages 199 - 206)
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