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Seiko began as a 店 — a shop that sold and repaired things. Citizen began as something quite different: the Shokosha Watch Research Institute, founded in 東京 in 1918 by Kamekichi Yamazaki.
Note the word. Not a 工場, not a shop — a 研究所. Yamazaki imported European and American machinery and set out to work out, from first principles, how a 時計 ought to be made. That instinct never left the 会社. Almost everything Citizen has ever done famously has been a 技術 problem solved before anyone asked for it.
In 1924 the institute produced its first commercial 懐中時計, and it needed a 名前. The one it got came from Shinpei Gotō, then the 市長 of 東京 — a man better known for rebuilding the city after the earthquake.
He suggested CITIZEN. The reasoning was stated plainly at the time: a fine 時計 should not belong only to the wealthy. It should be something an ordinary 市民 could own.
That is the entire brand, declared in 1924, before the company had made anything worth declaring it about. The 会社 formally became Citizen Watch Co. in 1930.
In 1956 Citizen released the Parashock — Japan's first shock-resistant 腕時計, with a sprung mounting that let the delicate balance jewels survive an impact.
They could have advertised it with a diagram. Instead they hired a helicopter.
In eleven cities, in front of department stores, a Parashock was 落とす from a helicopter hovering 三十 metres above the street. Crowds watched it hit the ground. It was picked up, checked in front of them, and found to be still running.
Three years after Parashock came Parawater — Japan's first genuinely 防水 時計. O-ring gaskets at the 風防, at the 裏蓋, at the case joints and at the 竜頭. Four seals, and the same seals kept out dust.
"Para" for protection. And the word is stamped on the back of a 時計 sitting in your case right now.
Claiming a 時計 is waterproof is easy. In 1963 Citizen ran the strangest proof in watchmaking history.
They strapped Parawater watches to roughly a hundred buoys and threw them into the Pacific, into the 黒潮 current, to drift wherever the 波 took them. Some of the buoys carried 手紙 written by Japanese 子供 at 学校, asking whoever found them to write back.
In 一九六六年, one came ashore near Manzanita, on the coast of Oregon. Someone 見つける it on the 海岸. The 時計 was still running.
In 1965 Citizen launched its flagship automatic line, and the 名前 is a technical claim rather than decoration.
Crystal means 鉱物 ガラス — mineral glass, a first on a Japanese 時計. Everyone else, Seiko included, was using acrylic, which scratches if you look at it. Mineral glass does not. That was worth putting in the 名前.
The design signature is the 曜日 window placed at the 上 of the 文字盤, above the centre, instead of beside the date. Nobody else did that, and it is how you spot one across a room.
Case back stamped GN2 · PARA WATER — the 1959 invention, still being advertised eight years on. Kanji 曜日 wheel, honeycomb ベルト almost spotless.
五十九年 old, never serviced in your hands, and both the 曜日 and the 日付 still change properly. There is an indent near the 12 marker on the 風防 — if your fingernail catches in it, polishing cannot reach it.
Probably the best watch in the collection.
STAR denotes the case 工場, not a grade. The hour markers are faceted like cut 石 and are the reason to own it.
There is 緑 on the bezel and 緑 on the 文字盤 at 12, 7 and 4. Those are not two faults — that is copper corrosion migrating inward from the bezel seam. It sits in the lacquer and will not come out. The haze on the ガラス, though, is probably just sixty years of 汚れ on the outside. Clean that first.
ACSG instead of ACSS: the G is for gold plating. The ガラス is smashed outright, there is corrosion on the 裏蓋, 緑 creeping along the outer edge of the 文字盤, and the 竜頭 is the wrong 色.
Broken ガラス plus a corroded back means the inside has been exposed from both directions. Open it and look for 錆 before spending anything. If the balance is rusted, this is a 部品 donor, not a project — and as a donor for three other 52xx Citizens, it still earns its place.
Citizen named things with complete literalness. The Auto Dater is an automatic with a date, and in 1966 that was worth saying out loud on the 文字盤.
Home-market versions carried the 防水 and 耐震 badges — the durability programme of the fifties, now sold as an everyday feature rather than a stunt.
黒い 文字盤 with a red SUN 曜日 wheel and a fluted bezel. The brushed ケース is genuinely clean — do not 研磨 it, brushed finishes are destroyed by polish and cannot be restored convincingly by hand.
⚠ Three things are loose at once. The cyclops has rotated, which means the ガラス itself has turned in its seat. The 秒針 has come off and is rattling around inside. And pushing the 竜頭 in makes the 文字盤 move, which means the 機械 is not clamped in the ケース at all.
Store it face-up and still. Do not wind it, do not set it. Every movement drags a loose 秒針 across a 黒い dial that shows everything.
The 同じ 52801 reference as Exhibit D, bought four days later for less than half the 値段. ¥2,970 against ¥6,700.
That is the most useful thing either watch will ever teach you. Exhibit D was bought in an auction, past the limit you had set. Exhibit E was a quiet store listing. The cheaper one was the correct 値段. A 21-jewel Auto Dater is not scarce.
You now own a matched pair — one 黒い, one silver — and either can donate 部品 to the other.
In 1967 Citizen released the Chronomaster, the summit of its range, with chronometer-grade regulation and a gold medallion set into the 裏蓋. Below it came a decade of hi-beat movements running at 二万八千八百 beats per hour.
Where a standard movement ticks six times a 秒, a hi-beat ticks eight. More 振動 means better positional stability and better accuracy — and tighter tolerances, less forgiveness for a heavy hand with the oiler, and a rate you cannot possibly regulate by eye.
This is also the decade where Citizen was visually braver than Seiko: faceted cases, cut crystals, coloured sunburst dials, names like Cosmostar, Leopard and Seven Star.
Four hundred yen. Plus ¥230 shipping. The best cost basis in the entire collection, and it was listed as 稼働 — running.
Stepped-link original ベルト, English 曜日 wheel. A hi-beat movement for the price of a coffee. Estimated ¥3,000–7,000 once serviced.
This is what the margin actually looks like — not in the contested lots with forty bids, but in the ones nobody was watching.
The 風防 on this one appeared to have a crack running across it. It does not. That is a faceted crystal — cut with angled panels, a deliberate 1970s design feature, and the reflection along a facet edge reads as a crack in a photograph.
The risk simply evaporated on inspection, and the watch went from a doubtful buy to one of the better ones. Worth remembering when you are looking at listing photos of anything from this decade.
A small 女性 hand-wound dress watch, white gold plated. These are the hardest things in the collection to sell and among the most interesting to work on — tiny movements, tiny screws, no margin for a clumsy tweezer.
WGP means plating, not solid gold. Treat the ケース exactly like the Laurel's: soap and 水, never 研磨.
The gap in the records. Twenty-one jewels and a TA case code, and beyond that nothing has been written down.
Photograph the 文字盤 and the 裏蓋, and find what you paid. A collection where one entry is a shrug is a collection you cannot price, insure or sell from. This is the cheapest job on the whole list and the one most likely to stay undone.
In 1970 Citizen released the X-8 Cosmotron Chronometer: the 世界's 最初 titanium 腕時計.
Not a variant. Not a limited edition. The first — and it stayed effectively alone for two decades, because チタン is genuinely difficult. It is 軽い, it is 強い, it does not corrode and it does not irritate skin. It is also hard to cut, hard to finish, and it gums up tooling designed for steel.
Citizen worked it out in 1970 because the 研究所 instinct from 1918 never went away. Twenty years before anyone else thought it was worth the trouble.
When quartz arrived, most firms competed on being cheap. Citizen asked a different question: why does a 時計 need a 電池 at all?
The Crystron Solar Cell of 1976 was the 世界's first analogue solar-powered quartz watch. A cell under the 文字盤 converts 光 into charge; the charge runs the movement; the 太陽 replaces the thing you used to have to change every two years.
It took nineteen years to get a good name. In 1995 it became Eco-Drive.
In 1993 Citizen released the 世界's first multi-band radio-controlled watch. It listens overnight for an atomic clock's 電波 and corrects itself while you sleep — 電波時計, a radio clock.
The Attesa line, launched in 1987, is where everything the company learned gets stacked into one product: チタン from 1970, solar from 1976, 電波 from 1993.
Three Citizen firsts in one 時計: チタン (1970), solar (1976), 電波 (1993). Sixty years of the 会社 on one wrist.
It arrived flat and has not moved since, which is expected — the cell is simply empty. It needs full days of direct 太陽, not window light. Once it wakes, watch the 秒針: single ticks mean healthy, two-second jumps mean the charge is low. If it will not hold charge after proper 充電, the capacitor is degraded, and that is a Citizen service job rather than a bench job.
The 箱 and 説明書 add real value — keep them together with the watch, always.
Citizen's movement subsidiary, Miyota, supplies a very large share of the 世界's mechanical watches — to a great many brands that would rather the 文字盤 did not mention it.
The 1918 研究所 ended up quietly powering the industry that spent a century not quite taking it seriously.
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