100 Years Of CITIZEN: The Latest Watch From A Technical Powerhouse Is An Old School Pocket Watch

Citizen is celebrating a major milestone this year – the centennial of the first Citizen watch. The actual history of Citizen goes back further than 1924, to the establishment of Citizen’s predecessor, the Shokosha Watch Research Institute, which was founded in 1918 by Kamekichi Yamazaki, who was Chief Secretary of the Tokyo Commercial and Industrial Timepiece Cooperative. The purpose of Shokosha was to establish an industrial base for the manufacture of watches in Japan, which had been pioneered by the establishment, by Kintaro Hattori, of the Seikosha clock factory in 1892. However by 1918 the Japanese watch industry was still in its infancy and largely relied on imported components and complete watches to supply its domestic market, As the evolution of industry in Japan progressed, with the first railroad in Japan opening in 1872, the first telephone service in 1877, and the launch of the first Japanese-built dreadnought battleship in 1904, it became increasingly clear that creating the capacity to make accurate, durable, and affordable clocks and watches domestically was essential.

Industrialized watchmaking at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was well established in the United States, where millions of watches could be produced annually, as well as in Europe and of course, Switzerland. It’s worth reflecting just how much specialist knowledge is necessary to make a precise, yet affordable watch. A simple, three handed pocket or wristwatch with small seconds is not a particularly complicated machine, but everything from the metallurgy involved, to the escapement geometry, mainspring and balance spring, and quality control systems, including quality control for precision, were and are all highly complex and acquiring or developing the technologies as well as integrating them into a rationalized production line, was no easy task.

However, in 1924, 100 years ago this year, Shokosha produced its first pocket watch.

An early example of this watch is still in Citizen’s museum in Tokyo. It’s an open faced pocket watch with a hinged caseback, engraved Citizen and Shokosha on the main movement bridge, and it’s a showcase for just how far Shokosha had come in six years. The watch shows obvious signs of technology transfer from the US and Europe but at the same time, it also shows how quickly Shokosha had grasped the basics.

The movement runs in 15 jewels, with a lever escapement – the use of jeweled bearings was at the time, still a rarity in Japanese made watches, and while the center wheel runs in a replaceable bushing, the rest of the going train and escapement are fully jeweled. Also of note is the use of an overcoil balance spring – like the jeweling, another sign of a high grade watch designed with chronometry in mind.

The finishing is workmanlike if not elaborately decorative, with visible tool marks on the bevels. But the functional finishing is solid where it counts; the countersinks for the jewels are mirror polished.

The story goes that the name “Citizen” was suggested by the then-mayor of Tokyo, Shinpei Goto, with whom Kamekichi Yamazaki was acquainted. The idea behind the name was the hope that mechanical watches, still a luxury in Japan, would one day be available to citizens in general. The name as you can see from the engraving on the watch, stuck, and in 1930 the Shokosha Watch Research Institute became the Citizen Watch Co.

The modern interpretation of the original pocket watch is very close in a number of respects, but it has its own characteristics which make it both a strong reminder of the original, as well as something that takes advantage of modern materials and methods.

At 43.5mm x 13.4mm, it’s pocket watch sized but not extremely so and as a matter of fact, it’s smaller than some modern sports watches (Omega makes several versions of the Planet Ocean 600M which are 45.5mm in diameter, for instance). If you’ve ever handled a size 16 pocket watch, this is just about exactly the same dimensions. The case is titanium and the typeface for the Arabic numerals is a very close approximation to that used for the original (the new Arabics look slightly thicker on the short vertical downstroke of the numeral 1).

As you get closer, though, some major differences become visible. The original has cathedral type hands, while the new watch has Breguet hands, and the dial for the new watch is very different from the original. The dial of the 100th has two layers. The base layer is made by electroforming – a process which involves the galvanic deposition of metal particles onto a model, or mandrel, and which can be used to create very finely detailed surfaces. The base layer is then overlaid with a clear coat of varnish, which gives depth to the dial overall. Citizen says the dial is intended to be reminiscent of accumulated snowfall, and to suggest the accumulation of past time.

The electroforming process has been used by Citizen elsewhere – for instance, in the dials of The Citizen 0200, which uses the caliber 0200 introduced in 2021. The kinship between The Citizen 0200 and the 100th Anniversary pocket watch is more than skin deep, and extends to the movement as well.

The pocket watch movement is the new, hand-wound caliber 0270, which was developed for the pocket watch, although the experience gained by Citizen in producing the caliber 0200 (in collaboration with La Joux Perret, which Citizen Group acquired in 2012, was instrumental in the design and production of caliber 0270. Both movements feature a small seconds subdial and in both watches, the small seconds is as was the case in traditionally laid out wristwatch and pocket watch movements, mounted on the pinion of the fourth wheel, which turns once per minute. By contrast, in modern wristwatches with small seconds, the basic design of the movement supports a center seconds hand and the addition of a small seconds subdial requires additional gearing.

The basic shape of the caliber 0270 plates and bridges is identical to that of the pocket watch. As shown above, the 12:00 position of the movement corresponds to the stem and bow of the watch, with the mainspring and ratchet wheel at the upper right. The balance, which appears to be the same size as the balance in the 0200, beats at 28,800 vph (again, the same as the caliber 0200; the frequency is more or less standard for modern watches). The center wheel, which turns once per hour, is at the center of the movement and adjacent to it, counting up in a clockwise spiral towards the balance, are the jewels for the third wheel, fourth wheel (at 6:00 where it naturally should be to drive the small seconds hand).

While this is a pocket watch movement, it is also a modern, high precision mechanical movement and this shows in comparison with the original 1924 pocket watch in a number of ways. One of these is in the profile of the gear teeth – the original has teeth with square cut bases while the caliber 0270 uses teeth with a cycloidal profile, which is stronger and which also produces less friction. A very significant difference is in the balance and escapement.

The balance of the original watch has a conventional regulator, with two pins used to adjust the active length of the balance spring. The cal. o270, on the other hand, has a freesprung, adjustable mass balance, the standard today on most precision watches (the Patek Gyromax balance and Rolex Microstella balance are just two examples). The balances from the calibers 0200 and 0270 are identical – both have two sets of balances, with one semicircular set for coarse rate adjustement and one circular pair for fine adjustment of rate. In both instances, the escape wheel and lever are LIGA fabricated, which means both high precision and great consistency.

Thanks to the relatively large balance, the caliber 0270 is visually well matches to the 43.5mm case (the wristwatch Citizen 0200 is 40mm, so there’s only an extra 1.75 millimeters of space on either side of the movement in any case). It’s always a wonderful thing to be able to look at a classic full bridge hand wound movement, and the movement is also very well finished. The bridges have diamond-cut bevels, the jewels and screws sit in very neatly executed, mirror polished countersinks; the bridges are decorated with Geneva-type parallel stripes, and the screw heads and slots are beveled and polished as well. Overall the level of decoration is noticeably finer than in other watches at this price point.

One other point worth dwelling on briefly is that mechanical pocket watches these days are extremely rare. The only one of the Big Three that still have pocket watches (and pocket watch movements) in their catalogue is Patek Philippe; you can get quartz pocket watches from Seiko but they are JDM only, and while Tissot (surprisingly enough) has pocket watches in its current catalog, based on the venerable Unitas 6498, you have to dig to find them.

There is a unique pleasure to owning and wearing a pocket watch, though – the shape makes them a sensual pleasure to hold and the larger size gives a more expansive and relaxed feeling to the passage of time. It also leaves room for complications, and I can’t help but wonder what if any the next steps might be for this caliber – like the 0200, it seems to be capable of supporting additional complications and something like the 100th Anniversary pocket watch, fitted with an annual calendar, would be delightful.

In the meantime, thanks to the case material, movement engineering and finishing, water and shock resistance, and precision (as well as the woven silk cord, made for Citizen by Domyo, which has been making woven kumihimo cords since the mid-seventeenth century) we have in the Anniversary Pocket Watch Caliber 0270, a very rare example of a practical, mechanically high grade pocket watch that offers a combination of features you cannot, as far as I know, find anywhere else in modern watchmaking.

Citizen 100th Anniversary Of The First Citizen Watch: ref. NC2990-94A; case, titanium alloy with dual spherical sapphire crystals front and back with AR coating. Dial, electroformed and varnished. Movement, Citizen caliber 0270, hand wound with stop seconds, adjusted to six positions and 3 temperature levels over 17 days’ testing, average daily variation in rate -3/+5 seconds per day, exceeding the COSC chronometer standard, running in 18 jewels at 28,800 vph. LIGA fabricated escapement; 55 hour power reserve. Limited edition of 100 pieces, available fall 2024; price, $9,000. For more information, visit Citizenwatch.com.