Ginza and the Watch: Wako, Seiko and the Street of Fine Things

At the Ginza 4-chome crossing, a clock in a granite tower still marks the hours with the Westminster Chimes. It has stood there since 1932, on a corner a watchmaker first claimed in 1894, and it belongs to the company that gave Japan its first wristwatch. Stand beneath it and turn slowly: within a few hundred metres are the first pearl shop in the world to sell cultured pearls, a glass-block lantern built for a Paris saddler, and a tower raised by a Roman jeweller. Ginza is Japan's street of fine things, and the clearest way to read it is through the watch.

This article follows that clock from a repair counter in 1881 to the Swiss references collectors now find in Tokyo. It sits within a set of five: the flagship essay Why the World's Treasures Came to Rest in Japan, a walk through Okachimachi, Tokyo's jewellery quarter, a study of how Japanese owners keep their pieces in Kept in the Box, and a history of the metal itself in Gold in Japan.

A clock above the crossing

Kintaro Hattori opened K. Hattori in Ginza in 1881, a shop that sold and repaired watches and clocks. In 1894 the company moved to the corner of Ginza 4-chome and built a store crowned with a clock tower, which soon became the place Tokyo arranged to meet. That first tower came down in 1921 to make way for a larger building; the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 delayed the work, and the present tower was completed in 1932.

The architect was Jin Watanabe, who also designed the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama and the main building of the Tokyo National Museum. His Hattori Building has a curved granite façade in a Neo-Renaissance manner, and it survived the firebombing of May 1945 that destroyed most of Ginza. From 1945 to 1952 the Allied occupation used it as the Tokyo PX, a store for occupation personnel. Hattori's retail division became Wako Co., Ltd. in 1947 and returned to the building in 1952. In 2022, after renovation, the building took the name Seiko House Ginza.

From a repair counter to Japan's first wristwatch

The retail business paid for the factory. In 1892 Hattori founded Seikosha in Tokyo to make wall clocks, and in 1895 the company introduced a pocket watch, the Timekeeper. In 1913, anticipating the move from pocket to wrist, it produced the Laurel, Japan's first wristwatch. The name Seiko first appeared on a watch dial in 1924.

Those dates matter to a collector because they explain why Japanese watchmaking and Japanese watch retailing grew up in the same building. The house that repaired imported pocket watches on the corner learnt what a good movement was before it built one, and the street outside became the country's showroom for time.

Grand, King and a Christmas quartz

Seiko's own chronology records that in 1960 it launched the Grand Seiko, aiming at the highest standard of accuracy in the world. The first model, with calibre 3180, was certified in-house to the superior grade of the chronometer standard of its day. In 1967 the 44GS set out the angular case, flat polished surfaces and broad hands that Grand Seiko still calls its style. In 1968 movements from Suwa Seikosha took fourth to tenth place at the Geneva Observatory competition. The rivalry between the company's two factories, which produced King Seiko as well as Grand Seiko, is told in King versus Grand: Seiko's 1960s Factory Duel.

On 25 December 1969 Seiko released the Quartz Astron, the world's first quartz wristwatch. Its story and its consequences for the Swiss industry are in Seiko Astron: The First Quartz Wristwatch. The Japanese pieces we hold sit in Japanese horology.

The street of the silver mint

Ginza was precious from the start. The district takes its name from a silver-coin mint, the ginza, established there in 1612 on land reclaimed from a swamp. After a great fire in 1872 the Meiji government rebuilt it as a showcase of modernisation, with brick buildings and wider streets; the English traveller Isabella Bird, visiting in 1878, thought it looked more like the outskirts of Chicago or Melbourne than an Asian city.

Jewellers followed the watchmakers. Kokichi Mikimoto produced his first cultured pearls on 11 July 1893 at Ago Bay in Mie, and in 1899 he opened the first Mikimoto pearl shop in Ginza. His London store followed in 1913. Today the Mikimoto Ginza 4-chome main store stands near Hattori's clock in a building by the architect Hiroshi Naito, reopened in June 2017, whose façade of small glass plates is meant to recall the surface of the sea. The pearl itself is explained in Pearls Explained: Akoya, South Sea, Tahitian and Freshwater.

When the great houses built in glass

From the turn of this century the European houses stopped renting shopfronts in Ginza and began commissioning architecture. Hermès opened its Maison on Harumi-dori in 2001, designed by Renzo Piano: a narrow tower faced in about 13,000 glass blocks, each 45 centimetres square and made in Florence, hung so the façade can move a few millimetres in an earthquake. Chanel followed in 2004 with a ten-storey building by Peter Marino whose façade glows after dusk in shifting patterns of camellia and tweed. Bulgari opened its Ginza Tower in December 2007, with a façade 56 metres high and, at the time, the largest Bulgari store in the world. Louis Vuitton, on its Namiki-dori corner since 1981, reopened there in March 2021 behind a rippling glass façade by Jun Aoki inspired by Monet.

Address in Ginza	House	Date	Why it matters to a collector
4-chome crossing	Seiko House Ginza (Wako)	Shop 1881; tower 1894; present building 1932	The birthplace of Japanese watch retailing and of the Laurel, Grand Seiko and Astron makers
4-chome	Mikimoto main store	First Ginza shop 1899; rebuilt 2017	The first shop for cultured pearls
5-4-1 Ginza	Maison Hermès	2001	Renzo Piano's glass-block lantern, with an exhibition floor above the shop
3-5-3 Ginza	Chanel Ginza	2004	Peter Marino's building; free exhibitions in the Nexus Hall
2-7-12 Ginza	Bulgari Ginza Tower	December 2007	Display windows that showed vintage museum jewels at opening
Ginza	Cartier flagship	First Ginza boutique 1991; flagship 2003; reopened 2016	Watches on the ground floor, diamonds above
Namiki-dori	Louis Vuitton Ginza Namiki	On the site since 1981; rebuilt 2021	Jun Aoki's second façade for the same corner
6-chome	Ginza Six	April 2017	Built on the site of Matsuzakaya, Ginza's first department store

The longer map of Tokyo's rooms, district by district, is in A Collector's Atlas of Tokyo Boutiques.

The Swiss watches Japan keeps

Japan has bought Swiss watches with conviction for decades, and it still does. In the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry's figures for 2024, Japan rose to third place among the world's markets for Swiss watch exports, up 7.8 per cent on the year and carried mainly by purchases from visitors. That steady appetite, over decades, is why so many important references now live in Tokyo cabinets: Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Omega and Cartier, often bought new in Japan and kept by one owner.

The pieces we hold show the range. A Rolex King Midas reference 9630 carries the five-sided gold case Gérald Genta designed for Rolex in 1964, years before his Royal Oak and Nautilus, with the name written in Greek letters on the dial. A Rolex Prince 3937 in a red-gold Railway case belongs to the 1940s. An Omega Speedmaster Snoopy Award 3578.51 commemorates the Silver Snoopy Award Omega received in October 1970 for the Speedmaster's part in the Apollo 13 mission; the reference was made in 2003 and 2004 in a numbered edition of 5,441. The houses are read in depth in our guides to the Rolex Submariner, Patek Philippe's Calatrava and Nautilus, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Omega Speedmaster. The rooms are Rolex, Patek Philippe and Cartier.

Reading a watch that has lived in Japan

A watch kept in Japan tends to arrive with its story written down. Look for the guarantee card from the boutique or department store where it was first bought, instruction booklets in Japanese, the inner and outer boxes, and the slips from each service, which record what was done and when. Together they let a collector follow a piece from its first counter to the present day. What each element adds to value, and why a complete set matters, is set out in What Makes a Full Set? Boxes, Papers and the Value of Completeness. How Japanese owners store and service their pieces is the subject of Kept in the Box, and the grades we use for condition are in Japanese condition ranks, explained.

Accounts of the tower's date differ in one respect worth knowing: some guides give 1894 for the building on the corner, which is the date of the first tower, while Seiko's own chronology gives 1932 for the present one.

Walking the street

Begin at the clock. On Saturdays and Sundays Chuo-dori becomes a pedestrian promenade, closed to traffic from noon to six in the evening between April and September and from noon to five between October and March, along about 1.1 kilometres from the Ginza-dori-guchi crossing to the 8-chome crossing. The first car-free day was 2 August 1970. Walk south past Mikimoto towards Ginza Six, then turn onto Harumi-dori for the Maison Hermès, whose upper floors hold a double-height exhibition space. Chanel's Nexus Hall at 3-5-3 Ginza holds exhibitions and concerts that are free to visit. Finish on Namiki-dori, the quieter parallel street, at the Louis Vuitton tower. For the wholesale side of Japanese jewellery, take the Yamanote line north to Okachimachi.

Five things to know about the clock and its street

• The plot a few doors from the clock, 4-5-6 Ginza, was the most expensive land in Japan in the 2025 official land price survey.
• When Seiko made what its chronology calls Japan's first television commercial, in 1953, the picture was the clock tower filling the screen.
• Godzilla destroyed the tower in the 1954 film; its fall returned in Shin Godzilla in 2016 and Godzilla Minus One in 2023.
• Wako has issued a watch to mark the tower's anniversaries about every ten years since its sixtieth, in 1992.
• The district's name, Ginza, means the seat of the silver mint, set up there in 1612.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Ginza clock tower open to visitors?

The building is Seiko House Ginza, renamed from the Wako main building in 2022, and its ground-floor shop and exhibitions are open to the public. The tower itself is admired from the crossing.

What was Japan's first wristwatch?

The Laurel, produced by Hattori's company in 1913. The Seiko name appeared on a watch for the first time in 1924.

When is Ginza closed to traffic?

Every Saturday and Sunday, from noon to 6 pm between April and September and from noon to 5 pm between October and March, on Chuo-dori between the Ginza-dori-guchi and 8-chome crossings.

Why do so many fine Swiss watches turn up in Japan?

Japan has been one of the strongest markets for Swiss watches for decades and ranked third in 2024. Many pieces were bought new in Japan and kept by one careful owner, with their papers. The fuller argument is in Why the World's Treasures Came to Rest in Japan.

Continue reading

• Franck Muller watches, for the Geneva house whose Japanese boutique moved from Aoyama to Ginza in 2000.