Masahiro Kikuno is a highly revered independent Japanese watchmaker who achieved international acclaim by becoming the first Japanese full member of the prestigious Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI). Born in Hokkaido in 1983, Kikuno attended the Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo, but his journey into high horology was largely self-taught. Inspired by George Daniels’ legendary step-by-step book Watchmaking and a documentary on traditional Japanese clockmakers, Kikuno resolved to craft his timepieces entirely by hand. Deliberately avoiding modern CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines and automated tools, he machines, finishes, and assembles almost every microscopic component by hand in his solitary atelier. Because of this incredibly labour-intensive, purist approach, Kikuno produces only one or two timepieces a year, cementing his creations as some of the rarest and most coveted in the world.
Kikuno’s horological philosophy is deeply intertwined with traditional Japanese culture and history. His magnum opus is the Wadokei or Temporal Hour Watch, a mechanical masterpiece that miniaturises the complex timekeeping system used in Japan during the Edo period. Unlike the modern fixed-hour system, the traditional Japanese method divided the day and night into six segments each, meaning the length of an "hour" constantly changed with the seasons and the shifting times of sunrise and sunset. Kikuno’s Wadokei ingeniously tracks these changing seasonal hours on the wrist via a complex system of automatically adjusting indexes. Through these extraordinary, culturally rich creations, Kikuno continues to bridge the gap between historic Japanese craftsmanship and modern independent haute horlogerie.
