The WWII Seikosha Kamikaze Watch
This Is the Seiko Watch Made for Japanese Pilots
During WWII
Known as the Seikosha Kamikaze, this obscure pilot’s
watch has an incredible story to tell that is a little-known facet of Seiko
history.
BY ZEN LOVE
SEP 12,
2019
https://www.gearpatrol.com/watches/a613700/watches-you-should-know-seikosha-tensoku-kamikaze/
As Japan
bitterly persevered toward the end of World War 2, young pilots were famously
sent on suicide missions against Allied ships. It’s said that an early Seiko
watch, properly known as the Seikosha Tensoku, was among their equipment. Often
overlooked in the discussion of military watch history, these captivating but
rare pilot’s instruments have some of the most interesting backstories in all
the watch world.
While
sometimes also referred to as Seikosha “Kamikaze” watches, the Tensoku was not
specifically produced for Japan’s Special Attack Units that are now commonly
known as kamikaze. The Tensoku watch is particularly associated with pilots of
the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, which was the main Japanese combat aircraft in the
Pacific War. These were the type of planes often used in the famous kamikaze
attacks, but they were used in a wide range of other capacities as well.
Produced
from around 1940, the Tensoku watches were provided to the Japanese navy by
Seikosha, an early name for Seiko before the branding its known by today was
established. Tensoku is an abbreviation of tentai kansoku, meaning astronomical
observation — very similar in meaning to the names of their better-known German
analogs from A. Lange & Söhne, Laco, Stowa, Wempe, and IWC. Those were
known as Beobachtungsuhr (or “B-uhr“), which is translated literally as
“observation watch.” These watches were important tools for aerial navigation
and other applications.
Like their
German counterparts, the Seikosha Tensoku is big even by modern standards, but
massive compared to civilian wrist watches of their time. Not quite as giant as
the 55mm-wide B-uhr, the Tensoku measures 48.5mm, which is quite large even for
today’s wrists (except perhaps those accustomed to G-Shock and Breitling
watches). Also like the B-uhr, they were supposedly often not worn on the
wrist, but rather strapped to pilots’ thighs — or dangled from the neck.
As
military-issued watches, these sizes were part of a range of specifications
that dictated features typically including strict legibility, durability,
accuracy, and other requirements. With minor differences between batches made
over the years, most featured the same fluted bezel, Breguet-style hands, and
large matte black dials with legible numerals and a sixty-minute scale at the
periphery in red. Taken together, the Seikosha Tensoku watches have a unique
and striking look among comparable military or aviation watches.
Examples of
the Tensoku watch are known to have been powered by a few different hand-wound
movements, mostly distinguished by the number of jewels they contained (15, and
then later, simpler but more robust nine-jewel ones). The oversized “onion”
shape of the crowns were big in order to remain usable while wearing the thick
gloves necessary in the frighteningly unheated cockpits of the time.
Today,
Seiko has risen extraordinarily to become Japan’s preeminent watchmaker and one
of the most respected watch brands in the world, with an ardent following like
that of few others. Many enthusiasts know that Seiko’s history can be traced to
the late 1800s, but most attention and enthusiasm for vintage models today
doesn’t look much further back than the 1960s and 1970s. Watches like the
Tensoku reveal another aspect and deeper context to the modern brand that many
people know so well.
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