Matsumoto Koshiro: This dial is thin, but it still gives a sense of depth to the extent that I feel that I am about to be almost swallowed by it. Indeed, it has a jet-black coating. To borrow an expression from novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s essay titled “In’ei Reisan” (In Praise of Shadows), its hue appears to be “built up of countless layers of darkness” (translated by Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker). How did you create such depth?

Isshu Tamura: As you quoted the Japanese word “taiseki” that means “build up,” it is possible to deepen the hue just by building up layers of urushi in the lacquering work on the dial. I understand that the word “Japan” is used abroad to refer to lacquerware in recognition of the fact that the unique hue of lacquerware is rooted in Japan’s tradition.

Matsumoto: I now know that the process of lacquering is not an easy one — you cannot finish it with just a single lacquer coating. Did you have any specific difficulty in employing your lacquering expertise to wristwatch dial production?

Tamura: I went through multiple rounds of lacquer coat application and polishing. The difficult part of the process was to choose exactly when I should go ahead with each round. How long it takes for the lacquer to dry varies each time, depending on the temperature and humidity levels. Lacquers tend to harden as they take in moisture in the atmosphere. This means they tend to dry more quickly during the tsuyu rainy season. Even so, I had to keep the thickness of lacquer coatings at 0.1 millimeter. In the final finishing step, I coated one of my fingers in a special kind of powder to buff the surface of the urushi dial. This step was also meant to be my last moment to check the quality of the finished work. I did everything by hand throughout the entire lacquering process. I kept relying on my experience and intuition, not reason.

Matsumoto: In the kabuki world, I need to keep playing the same role in a monthlong run. In reality, how I feel physically and how audiences react to my performances vary day after day. So, it is quite important to know exactly how I really feel every day because I have to take care of myself and keep in shape day after day so as to continue always playing the same role in the same way. I now believe that the worlds of traditional performance art and traditional craftsmanship have much in common — intuition fostered by an accumulation of experience seems to be of vital importance in both worlds.

Tamura: Every time I receive an offer to take up a new challenge, I, of course, feel nervous about the difficulty of what I am supposed to do. Yet, I feel excited at the same time. Once I begin my new experience, I usually keep overcoming one hurdle after another. Then, at a certain time, suddenly I notice an improvement in my skills. This is the moment of joy in my craftsmanship career. If I choose to rest on the laurels of tradition, new opportunities will become less and less visible to me.

Matsumoto: I agree with what you are saying. To inherit a tradition and hand it down to the next generation, I believe that we need to keep taking on new challenges in line with changes in the times. In the kabuki world, we have introduced a variety of new events, including staging Shakespeare plays in kabuki style and putting on a new kabuki play at a skating rink. We streamed the world’s first online kabuki performance, titled “Zoom Kabuki ‘CHŪSHINGURA,’” in the summer of 2020.
Through this project, I was given the opportunity to get a firsthand look at a variety of “Presage” watches, the fruit of Japan’s traditional craftsmanship. As I got to know the artisans involved in the production of these superb dials, I felt really stimulated. All of the artisans are sincerely devoted to producing these dials, proving that they believe in the possibility of traditional craftsmanship developing further in the future. For my part, I would like to keep carving out the future of the kabuki world.