Title Making time : astronomical time measurement in Tokugawa Japan / Yulia Frumer

Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2018] ©2018

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Description 1 online resource (270 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, maps Series Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Contents Variable hours in a changing society -- Towers, pillows, and graphs: variation in clock design -- Astronomical time measurement and changing conceptions of time -- Geodesy, cartography, and time measurement -- Navigation and global time -- Time measurement on the ground in Kaga domain -- Clock-makers at the crossroads -- Western time and the rhetoric of enlightenment Summary What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything-it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In 'Making Time, ' Yulia Frumer upends this assumption, using changes in the conceptualization of time in Japan to show that humans perceive time as constructed and concrete. In the mid-16th century, when the first mechanical clocks arrived in Japan from Europe, the Japanese found them interesting but useless, because they failed to display time in units that changed their length with the seasons, as was customary in Japan at the time. In 1873, however, the Japanese government adopted the Western equal-hour system as well as Western clocks Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Time measurements -- Japan -- History SCIENCE -- Time. Tokugawa period, Japan, 1600-1868 Time measurements Zeitmessung Astronomie Astronomische Zeitmessung Technischer Fortschritt SUBJECT Japan -- History -- Tokugawa period, 1600-1868. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069473 Subject Japan Japan Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780226524719 022652471X

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