Yu Ishihara has spent his career designing watches that demand an almost unreasonable degree of care, where proportion, legibility, the way light moves across a dial late on a winter afternoon in Japan, and the mechanical architecture humming away beneath all of it are only made possible through a lofty level of expertise few globally can ever claim.
Ishihara designed the Grand Seiko Kodo Constant-force Tourbillon, a revolutionary reference in the horological world that places a tourbillon and a constant-force mechanism on a single axis (something no wristwatch had ever done) – a piece that sits comfortably among the most technically ambitious mechanical watches made anywhere this century.
He is now sitting across from me in a Sydney hotel, joined by Yuya Suganuma, to explain why any watch a vampire would wear needs to measure the time between blood feeds. A Blood Counter, if you will.
And he’s doing so with the same sincerity as if he were explaining how the Kodo Constant-force Tourbillon works. Though, if I’m being completely honest, this is a touch easier to understand.
“What does a vampire actually need to know from a watch?” I hear you ask. Well, it would depend on whether it's day or night, presumably, given the stakes. How much blood is left in reserve? Should there be some sort of consumption limit? Whether legibility even matters during the hours when the wearer is, ideally, asleep in a box.
It’s something we might discuss down the pub watching the footy, but Ishihara treats every one of these issues the way he would treat a brief from Grand Seiko. As far as he is concerned, that is exactly what Seiko’s Power Design Project is: it’s what happens when Seiko gives its designers permission to dream a little.
“I actually think this design was only possible because of what I learned through my work at Seiko and Grand Seiko,” Yu Ishihara tells me.
“At first glance, designing a watch for vampires may seem like a completely fantastical concept. But the questions I asked myself were actually very simple: What information would this user truly need? What kind of experience should this watch provide?”
“As I explored those questions, features such as the 24-hour display, which clearly distinguishes day from night, and the Blood Counter, which helps monitor remaining blood supply, emerged quite naturally.”
The Vampire Exclusive Watch uses a 24-hour hand rather than the conventional 12-hour display. After all, confusing 9 AM with 9 PM would be a fairly terminal mistake for the intended wearer.
So too, the dial itself only shows the hours between 6 PM and 6 AM, with the daytime hours obscured beneath semi-transparent ink. There is even a three-night power reserve, allowing the movement to keep running while its owner spends two entire days in a coffin.
25 years after the first edition in 2001, albeit with a 13-year intermission, the Power Design Project largely operates outside of Seiko’s regular remit. After all, this is a vertically integrated industrial giant that makes its own movements, its own hairsprings, its own lume, and a remarkable proportion of everything in between.
Rather than beginning with a price point or a gap in the range that needs a timely update, Seiko's in-house designers begin with a person, an absurd scenario, or a design problem they can't stop thinking about. Then, they’re allowed to follow that idea wherever it leads, designing a truly unique expression of who they are as designers, and what Seiko can represent as a brand.
"Unlike our regular work, we can take an approach that focuses entirely on the user, without being tied to any particular brand or collection," Ishihara explains.
The resulting watches aren’t put into production or placed behind the vitrines, but travel the world in roaming exhibitions like the Power Design Project: Incredibly Specialized Watch Exhibition, which ran in Sydney this week.
"While the theme itself is playful and imaginative," he continues, "the design process was surprisingly serious and not all that different from my day-to-day work.”
“In that sense, rather than stepping away from the values associated with Seiko or Grand Seiko, this project gave me an opportunity to apply those same design principles to a completely different world."
Of course, the premise is barmy, and the design process is rigorous, and the watch is strange precisely because the designer took the brief seriously. Give a great designer an absurd brief, and they will still solve the problem properly. That is perhaps just what great designers do.
Ishihara’s colleague Yuya Suganuma, whose creative wanderings led to the design of the Ninja Stealth Watch, told me that "without having to worry as much about constraints such as sales plans or production costs, I felt a greater sense of freedom because I could challenge myself with mechanisms and designs that don't yet have a proven track record.”
Designed around stealth, darkness, and discreet time-telling, it’s a watch for someone whose professional success depends on going completely unnoticed, which is an unusual requirement for an accessory category largely built on legibility.
"Since the watch was designed around the needs of a ninja, some of its features may not be necessary for most people,” he laughs.
“That said, it could actually be quite useful in situations like a movie theater or a dark auditorium, where you can check the time discreetly without looking down at the dial or disturbing those around you.”
The Ninja Stealth Watch was on the table as I walked into the hotel room, where both Ishihara and Suganuma were waiting. Now, I’m usually the first to pick up the references for a touch and feel as soon as I walk into a room. Ishihara’s Vampire watch was conventional enough: a black leather strap with a blood-red underside and a traditional clasp made for easy wear. But I’ll admit, Suganuma’s Ninja watch left me a tad puzzled.
Lifting it up, the trailing black leather where the strap should have been was long enough to wrap around my arm at least three or four times, much like the binding on some piece of medieval armour. It turns out there is a very good reason for that.
The strap was made from deer leather and takes its cues from the way a traditional Japanese archery glove is secured. Rather than opting for a traditional bracelet, Suganuma wanted something that could be tightened around arms of different sizes and, rather conveniently, provide some protection to whatever bit of the ninja is carrying the watch.
“Being able to use a strap that would never be approved for a regular product was probably the most unconventional idea,” Suganuma confessed.
Unconventional, indeed. It’s something that’s shared across a collection that boasts the Egg-Boiling Watch for Boiled Egg Lovers; a watch that can perfectly time the cooking of an egg, housed in a soft-coiled cross section: the white the bezel, the yolk the ooey-gooey dial.
Designed by Kento Ito, the Specialized Watch for Club DJs is perhaps the most visually striking of the pieces, which incorporated an infinity mirror into the dial to create this illusion of depth behind the illuminated appearance.
Trying on these pieces, I was reminded of the concept car. After all, auto manufacturers have long built outlandish show cars that preview a design language or test a technology before handing the keys over to the showroom floor. The Power Design Project is the natural comparison. We’re not likely to see the egg timer on display behind the vitrines anytime soon, but it gives its designers license to explore a question or a point of view. To see another side of a company we all know so well, when the question of “why?” becomes “why not?” Somehow, for Seiko, the idea of a watch for a vampire starts to make perfect sense.