Photo Report: A Tour Of Grand Seiko, Part 1
There are factory tours, and then there are factory tours. In my few short years at Hodinkee, I’ve been lucky to have a look behind the curtain at several of the world’s top watchmakers. Other brands might focus on complications, design, accuracy, handcraft, or production volume, but – to me, at least – no brand combines all of the above like Grand Seiko. Fresh off my return from Japan, I’m still floored by everything I saw on my recent week-long trip.
The Credor Spring Drive Sonnerie was launched at Baselworld in 2006 and still holds up as incredible watchmaking today.
Seiko has run its “media experience” since the early 2000s, touring journalists around Seiko and Grand Seiko factories. With the global launch of the GS brand in 2010, the company started separate tours. Hodinkee visited in 2015, and a few times before and since, but with the pause in travel for the 2020 pandemic, our editorial travel with Grand Seiko had stopped. That said, this is much the same experience other outlets may have shared. All I can say is I tried to bring my personal perspective and hopefully different, creative questions for some of the most influential people shaping Grand Seiko today.
Seiko Watch Corporation President Akio Naito, who we’ll hear from in an upcoming interview-oriented story.
The brand does its best to be comprehensive, but on some occasions, I wasn’t allowed to take photos for privacy reasons. I’ll also spare you most anything unrelated to watches, though several non-watch experiences did play a role in Grand Seiko’s trip. The goal was to help us understand the work behind the brand and the culture of Japan that informs that work. Just being in Japan for the first time was a meaningful experience for me – my father lived in Japan for a few years as a child, and thanks to the trip, I could visit the city he lived in and even stay at the hotel they first lived at. So much of Japan has changed over that time, but so much has remained the same.
Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi, which we’ll visit in Part 2.
The biggest change for Grand Seiko since our last trip was the inauguration of the brand’s Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi, which is dedicated to all of Grand Seiko’s mechanical watches. Other achievements since include winning the GPHG Men’s prize in 2021 for the SLGH005 “White Birch” and the GPHG Chronometry prize in 2022 for the “Kodo.” You’ll see both—and a lot more—in my dispatch across Japan. If you’re a Grand Seiko fan going to Japan, this might be a guide to what you might see (though many parts of the tour aren’t open to the public). For others, you might find it just as cool as I did to see how everything is made and even glimpse some watches you never knew existed.
Day 1 – Seiko House Ginza, The Wako Store, Kodo Designer Takuma Kawauchiya, And More In Tokyo
On Monday, we arrived at the Seiko House Ginza. Built in 1932, the building has become one of Japan’s most iconic commercial properties. The four-sided Seiko clock at the top of the building shows up in everything from weather reports to its “destruction” in “Godzilla Minus One.” On January 27, 1945, B-29 Superfortress bombers leveled much of Ginza. Miraculously, the Wako building survived with minor damage and was later taken by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers as a PX. The building was returned to Seiko in 1952 and served as retail and office space for the company (with their daily offices a 10-minute walk away).
After an introduction to the brand’s history and a greeting from Munehisa Shibasaki, the Director and Senior Vice President of Grand Seiko Global (who some of you may know as the former CEO of Seiko Watch Division in the U.S.), we took a short elevator ride to the 7th floor to visit Atelier Ginza. The space looks largely like a giant briefing room except for a glass box on the left side near the window. Through the glass, there is a humidity and temperature-controlled clean room where the brand’s top watchmakers make their most complicated products.
I immediately spotted the famous Takuma Kawauchiya. If not famous for his music career, he’s known to watch lovers as the mind behind the T0 Tourbillon concept, which became the GPHG Chronometry Prize-winning Kodo. Kawauchiya-san was completely unfazed as I photographed through the glass, and in fact, someone from the Seiko team had to put on a coat to enter the clean room to grab him for a presentation.
The T0 concept is displayed in the front of the atelier, with the GPHG award next to it and an oversized demonstration model of the Kodo’s tourbillon and constant force cage. The brand also had brief bios (in Japanese and English) of the watchmakers at work inside. The atelier had an “aquarium” quality, so I felt somewhat self-conscious, bothering the team as they worked. The 7th floor is by invitation only, and the team only gets around one visiting group per week to work without distraction. When Kawauchiya-san finally emerged from the clean room, he gave us a preview of a presentation he was working on for an upcoming trade conference, all about the Kodo. But in the process, I learned a lot more about Kawauchiya.
“After studying at both engineering university and watchmaking school, I joined the Seiko company,” Kawauchiya told us. “I worked in the R&D department for about ten years. Utilizing my engineering knowledge and the skills I honed at watchmaking school. I enjoyed working in the R&D department, but I felt a gradual sense of uneasiness, and this sense of unease was due to another side of my background: my career as a guitarist. Before becoming a watchmaker, I was an active guitarist. For about 10 years, the artist in me felt that Japanese watchmaking making had placed too much emphasis on rationality and functionality and had forgotten how to appeal to people’s emotions.”
“So I decided to listen to my voice as an engineer and the artist and apply it to my watchmaking. As an engineer, I pursued functionality such as precision or durability, things that can be expressed in numbers. As an artist, I pursued elements that would appeal to emotions, such as the appearance or the sound of the watch. My journey was a process of harmonizing my engineering and artistic voices, which resulted in the creation of the Kodo Constant Force Tourbillon.”
“When we think of artistry expressed in watches, we first think of the craftmanship of artisans such as beautifully polished jumpers or engravings. However, the art of watchmaking is much more than just these traditional techniques. Suppose art is an expression or work that moves someone emotionally through the five senses. In this case, the motion of a watch mechanism or the sound produced by the mechanism is also a form of artistic expression that can be considered artistic expressions unique to watches. With the Kodo, we wanted to address two forms of artistic expressions, motion, and sound.”
While I won’t give away the rest of his talk, it really is impressive how the Kodo hits all the right notes (no pun intended) across the board of artistic design, functionality, and sound it makes. We’ve written about the watch several times (including the new “Daybreak” version), so head over to one of those stories to learn more. Before we parted ways, I asked Kawauchiya a few other questions. Two of the most common points of confusion from enthusiasts are the surprise at the price and the skeletonized design.
“When I was working on the original concept, it was more of an open project, meaning it wasn’t decided which brand within our company to release this new mechanism,” he told me, meaning it could have just as easily become a Credor release. “Therefore, the objective was to simply create the ideal watch without any boundaries. I wanted to make something outstanding with a new aesthetic and beauty that was unseen before. After the concept was created, the company decided to introduce this new mechanism as a Grand Seiko. From there, we still wanted to use the creation’s aesthetics to keep the skeletonized movement aesthetic and introduce something truly unique and original for Grand Seiko.”
It’s been unseasonably warm in Japan, and that was never more apparent than when we made our way to the roof of Seiko House Ginza to see the famous clock. It’s just a shame that Godzilla really seems to have it in for the clock and keeps knocking it down. As the sun beat down, we grabbed a few quick photos before retreating to more air-conditioned venues.
The GPHG-winning Grand Seiko SLGH005 “White Birch.” This watch was lent to me by Grand Seiko, who outfitted all the journalists with loaner watches they thought would suit them well. I do enjoy the SLGH005, but I had my eye on another watch – stay tuned to see if I got it.
Next, we headed down to the Wako boutique, which retails Seiko on the ground floor and imported brands like IWC, Panerai, Breguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Glashütte Original, Franck Muller, Baume & Mercier, and Piaget. Pictures weren’t allowed inside Wako, though they made an exception so we could photograph a display of the brand’s history. On the second floor is the Grand Seiko and Credor Jewellery Salon.
In addition to basically every current model of Grand Seiko spread across the two floors (including Japanese Domestic Market exclusives and Wako Boutique pieces), there’s also a bespoke Grand Seiko experience that allows customers to choose from dials and cases to make a personal piece, to be delivered in a little over a year. These watches must be cased in precious metals, and the combination of options can push the prices well over $100,000. But for some (well-heeled) Grand Seiko fans, having a bespoke piece might be the crowning achievement of their collection.
The second floor of the Wako boutique also often carries vintage Grand Seiko watches, serviced and verified by the brand, but the success of these timepieces meant that they were fully sold out when I visited.
We will visit the Seiko Museum later in the week but there’s a really fascinating historical mini display around one of the pillars on the fourth floor. It covers much of Grand Seiko’s history, starting with the “Grand Seiko First.”
One of the best parts about shopping in Japan – in addition to the favorable exchange rate to the U.S. dollar – is the access to the JDM pieces and the Ginza Boutique Exclusives. Two sides of the pillar are dedicated to all the Ginza boutique pieces. For many of those watches, Grand Seiko made the rare decision to put Arabic numerals in their “Breguet” style on the dials. These are some of the only Grand Seikos to use numerals. I also got to see the newest boutique exclusive, with a salmon dial, and even some of the Grand Seiko team didn’t yet know about the watch.
The display also honored the Neuchatel Observatory contest-winning caliber from 1967. This is the watch that turned the watch world on its head, proving Seiko’s capabilities on the world’s stage. In addition to a copy of the award, there was an example of the caliber 052 on display.
At our last stop in Tokyo, we stopped by the newest Grand Seiko Boutique in the very trendy Ometesando. While Ginza has the most expensive real estate in Japan, Ometesando has the fastest-growing costs. The new boutique is designed around hands-on access to watches, which are openly on display, a new design for Grand Seiko.
Day 2: Seiko Epson Shiojiri Plant And Shinshu Watch Studio – Home Of Spring Drive, 9F Quartz, And The Micro Artist Studio
After a 2.5-hour drive at the end of day 1, we arrived at a hotel in Kobuchisawacho and rested for our longest day. We got the first glimpse of nature, which inspires so much of Grand Seiko’s craft, as we left our hotel. Dazed, a bit jetlagged, and under-caffeinated, I missed the photos of the red pine forests, but we did get a glimpse of Lake Suwa, which has (as many other landscape features) been turned into a Grand Seiko dial.
Lake Suwa.
As we entered Shiojiri, we saw our first glimpse of the Seiko Epson Shiojiri Plant. You’re probably not alone if you’re confused by the Epson name on a Seiko building. Like many Japanese companies, Seiko has quite a confusing corporate structure, but Seiko Epson dates back to an earlier company founded in 1942. When Seiko was selected to be the official timekeeper for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, they needed to provide a printing timer. In 1968, the company made the EP-101 (EP for electronic printer) the world’s first mini printer, and the name of the company eventually changed to Epson, for “son of the Electronic Printer.”
More importantly for watch lovers, the Seiko Epson Corporation also has the Shinshu Watch Studio, which is responsible for the manufacturing and R&D for all of Seiko’s Spring Drive, Quartz, and GPS-related technology. Seiko Epson Corporation feeds into Seiko Watch Corporation, which then manages the sales, marketing, manufacturing, and R&D for Credor, Seiko, and Grand Seiko. Shinshu is one of the few fully integrated watch manufacturing facilities in the world, so getting to see even a portion of the work done there is pretty unusual.
The Suzuka Mountains that sit near the Shiojiri.
Assembly Of Spring Drive and Quartz Watches
We started our tour with the assembly of Grand Seiko’s Spring Drive and quartz watches. While we weren’t able to enter the clean room or see much of the manufacturing up close, Grand Seiko does show live video feeds of their watchmakers and assembly team at work, which you can see below.
Here, a watchmaker is working on a spring for the backlash auto-adjust mechanism, as seen in a photo of that video feed. Normally, a quartz watch has a visible bounce or backlash to the second hand that causes a lack of precision in the display of the time (no matter how precise quartz is). Kuniharu Natori and the development team for the 9F created a portion of the gear train with a hairspring that takes some of the torque out of the mechanism and transmits it more smoothly to the rest of the train. The work is so fine and delicate, but it was impressive the speed with which they were able to move to accomplish their task.
Another delicate task is the setting of the hands. The employees have to manually place the hands without scratching the dial. On a watch like the SBGA211 “Snowflake,” the hands all have to fit within a 2mm space, with only 0.2mm between them. You can see the setting, as shown on a video screen below.
Finally, we walked past the area where final assembly and casing (and bracelet placement) is performed. But before we move on to the next part, I want to show you a display of medals that caught my eye. These are from Seiko employees who medaled in the International Skills Olympics for watchmaking. Succession of skills is incredibly important at Seiko, and not only are Seiko employees graded on their personal skills but also those of their subordinates that they’re responsible for training.
Case Manufacturing
Out of the things that Grand Seiko is known for, there’s a certain fascination with their case manufacturing. Grand Seiko takes two different paths to case manufacturing: CNC cutting and cold forging. Things like the Grand Seiko lion placed on the caseback of some of the watches are cold forged. But really, there’s one major star of the show for GS: Zaratsu polishing.
For those who haven’t heard about Zaratsu, you get a good look at it below. This is Grand Seiko’s technique for creating a perfect distortion-free case polishing. Often the brand combines that polishing with brushed surfaces to play with light and shadow – a common theme in Grand Seiko’s design language. But some people might be surprised to hear that, despite the name, it’s not a Japanese technique at all.
The polishing wheel paper and other materials used to get the super-high polish mirror surface that Grand Seiko is known for.
The name actually comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the German name “Sallaz.” In the 1950s, Seiko acquired their first polishing machines which were engraved with the name “GEBR.SALLAZ”, or “Sallaz Bros” – the name of the manufacturer – and with the Japanese pronunciation, the name stuck.
Those same machines are used today in the company’s case finishing facilities. The cases for all Grand Seiko watches featuring this technique, not just the Spring Drive or quartz, will go through Seiko Epson, where skilled craftsmen polish cases down to 0.05mm through tons and tons of experience. One of the main differences of the Sallaz machines is that they use the side of the large, flat surface of the polishing disk and not the side. The polish starts with gray and then moves topink material to buff. Finally, the pink disk shown above gives the mirror polish.
Grand Seiko says this can’t be done by machine, and I can see why. The sensitivity the polisher showed (while having to put up with a bunch of media around him) was remarkable. Just small bits of polishing at a time, and he was well on his way. Occasionally, he’d pull the case back from the wheel and check the surface before doing a bit more.
To achieve the contrasting brushed surfaces, another worker runs the case horizontally along a more heavily-gritted disk, using an angled surface as a guide. It was a slow and meticulous process; the disk doesn’t spin during this step so it was more like watching someone slowly rake the sand of a bunker. The combination of the two gives a very distinct sense of sharpness to the cases.
Doing the brushed surfaces.
Checking to make sure there’s no major issues.
Dial Manufacturing
Finally, we got to the thing that Grand Seiko is probably most known for (or at least the thing that you see most quickly at a glance): their dials. Grand Seiko uses a number of closely-guarded techniques and technologies for their dials – including their newest “Atera Valley” dial that really captured my attention while on the tour. The brand showed us a bit of a behind-the-scenes with the step-by-step process of their Snowflake dial, but the dial manufacturing process can vary significantly from one watch to another.
One of the things that never really gets old for me is pad printing. I saw it last – done by hand – at F.P. Journe’s Les Cadraniers, but here, Grand Seiko uses a bit more technology to make sure the dials and pads are lined up perfectly. The brand does produce significantly more watches per year than F.P. Journe – an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 from what I’ve heard anecdotally – so this makes a lot of sense. The general framework is the same.
Ink is drawn across a pad that holds the relief of the text to be printed on the dial. A gelatin is pressed onto the pad, lifting up that ink. The machine slides the pad out of the way and shifts the dial into perfect position for the gelatin to press the text (in this case, the iconic Gothic font of “Grand Seiko”) onto the dial. If there’s any extra ink on the pad, it too will be picked up by the gelatin, so it’s important that the preparation is done correctly.
The text is lifted up.
The dial is shifted into place.
Dial feet before being polished.
Loose dial feet.
Polishing the dial feet…
… and then placing them.
The tour also featured things like the dial feet being set into place – with tiny holes on the dial so small they’re barely perceptible unless you look with a microscope. Any mistake in placing those feet and the dial is scratched and unusable. For some reason, I was also fascinated by seeing how the hands are blued. I guess I’ve never had a brand show me their process before, and while I knew that the blue hue of things like Grand Seiko’s second hand comes from a heat treatment, I didn’t even consider that it wasn’t done with an open flame. Instead, a skilled craftsman places the hand on a small plate that is seated on a heating element. He does about three hands in sequence, removing them at just the right moment, and you can actually watch the color change.
They keep a reference color nearby so that if they need to double-check their work, they can quickly look over and remember the perfect hue of blue.
Gem-Setting
Here’s something I don’t normally associate with Grand Seiko. while touring the Shinshu Watch Studio, we got to witness some of the work of their skilled gem-setting team. Yes, there are a number of gem-set Grand Seiko models, specifically in their Masterpiece Collection, like the SBGD213 and SBDG209, limited to eight and five pieces, respectively.
Using a variety of setting styles and techniques, their master craftsmen can do the setting for approximately 50 stones a day. For the SBGD213, there are 112 diamonds set in the platinum case (a much harder material to work with than white gold) and 60 more on the bezel, which means that it takes over six days of work in the workshop.
Tools of the gemsetting trade.
Micro Artist Studio
For the most passionate fans of Grand Seiko (and the most well-heeled collectors), the visit to the Micro Artist Studio is probably the moment you’ve all been working on. Because of the impressive work done in the studio by some of Seiko’s most skilled, talented, and artful craftspeople, the studio-within-a-studio is legendary. Not only that, some of the techniques practiced here are passed on from other legends, including one you can spy in the photo below.
If you don’t know the Micro Artist Studio, you probably know their work, some of which is shown on the tray below. This is probably one of the most valuable trays of current-production Seikos ever assembled, with everything from a platinum 8-day SBGD201 to the Credor Eichi II and even the incredibly complicated Credor Sonnerie.
We don’t talk enough about the Credor Sonnerie, a watch that still feels very futuristic as a Spring Drive chiming watch, despite the fact that it’s been around for 18 years now.
The dial of the Eichi II, which is maybe the most well-known watch coming out of the Micro Artist Studio.
Check out the finishing on the SBGZ003’s 9R02 movement, with the deep, polished anglage that was taught to the team by Philippe Dufour.
We were given brief instructions on the process of making the Credor Eichi II dials, which require multiple rounds of enameling, hand painting, firing, and polishing to give the level of depth and three-dimensionality that the dials are known for. While visiting the workshop, the team was working on both white and blue dials (I’m not sure if we were just lucky or if they saved their work for when they could best show it off). I showed these photos to a friend who wasn’t well-versed in the history of the Eichi II or the dial (but is a fan of enamel work), and he was floored to see that everything on the dial – from the indices to even the logo – was hand-painted. Trust me, it’s even more incredible to watch in person.
A very fine brush used for painting the dials.
Picking up the paint.
Slowly applying the lines by hand.
You may have noticed this in the previous wide shot of the studio (or seen it elsewhere, as the photo is pretty iconic) but, yes, all the work is still “supervised” by Philippe Dufour – or at least in spirit. The team keeps a photo of the Swiss master sitting over their work benches, a totem or shrine of sorts to the man who helped convey a lot of the techniques used in the studio.
The assembly and finishing of all the masterpiece watches that come out of the studio is done with an elevated level of the combination of artistry and technicality that Grand Seiko is known for. Yes, the watchmakers look a little more like laboratory assistants in some photos, but the craft is still all there. Seeing the watchmakers assemble such a wonderfully finished Spring Drive movement hammered home the fact that Spring Drive isn’t a “lesser” movement but really just a culmination of a pursuit of combining advanced precision with horological craft.
As we returned to a conference room to talk about the movements in more depth, we got to see one final component of the quartz manufacturing that we couldn’t visit in person: the quartz itself. This massive block of quartz crystal, as shown below, is the result of six months of growth in one of Seiko’s facilities, which is dedicated to keeping things in-house. I wish we could have seen the facility in person, but as it was described to me, it’s just a very tall silo where silica dioxide molecules are encouraged to bond together. A block like this, about 18 inches long and maybe 6 inches tall and wide, can make about 100,000 quartz oscillators. The fragments are aged and tested before use, and only the best quality will make it into Grand Seiko’s movements, like the 9F movement seen below.
The Seiko Epson Shiojiri Plant also features a small museum of some of the brand’s biggest electronic (and mechanical) watch achievements For visitors who might only see one part of Seiko’s manufacturing facilities. But since we’ll be visiting the Seiko Museum in Ginza later this week, I will skip our first bullet train ride, where we say goodbye to Shiojiri (and Nagano City) and head to our next stop.
Goodbye for now from Nagano.
Hodinkee
