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Ultra-cool collaborations and ambassadors, new flagships and regional exclusives: Japan and everything Japanese is all the rage right now, in watchmaking and beyond. “Today Japan is a reference for what's going on in fashion and art. For the young generation, Japan is the place to be," says Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of Hublot, which last month relocated and revamped its original Kyoto flagship – with Guadalupe hinting at more Japanese locations to come.
Hublot – whose raison d’être is encapsulated in the house tagline Art of Fusion – has always been about a melting pot of ideas and disciplines. “It is the fusion between past and future, between traditional craftmanship and pop culture,” adds Guadalupe, who makes reference to Hublot’s bestselling collaboration with the influential pop artist Takashi Murakami, as well as the brand’s new Kyoto boutique, where muted grey interiors meet Nishijin brocade (a traditional Kyoto textile), Japanese plaster walls and Gensho stone flooring.
But don’t just take it from a watch CEO. Eagle-eyed watch fans may have clocked Jay-Z’s wrist at the Superbowl in 2023, which hosted a Richard Mille RM 47 Tourbillon. Featuring a hand sculpted and engraved gold samurai dial, the 75-piece limited edition watch is “an aesthetic tribute to Japanese culture” and the “finest embodiment of the Bushido spirit,” said Richard Mille, referring to the term for the samurai code of conduct.
With its strong aesthetic appeal, it’s no surprise that Japan is a rich muse for watchmakers. “It’s a country with a strong cultural influence and a very dynamic artistic scene,” says Nicola Andreatta, CEO of Roger Dubuis, whose collaboration with the avant-garde artist Hajime Sorayama is just one in a spate of recent watchmaking collaborations with Japanese names. Sorayama, who is known for his “sexy robots” series, is famously disruptive. “I am just interested in exposing the boundaries of taboos that everyone deliberately refuses to see or ignore”, he says.
It’s all about challenging the status quo. “Both our audiences are animated by the same desire to explore, to challenge, to go beyond,” says Andreatta. For Sorayama, these watches are as highly technical as they are “delicate machines that are very erotic.” The Roger Dubuis Excalibur Sorayama Monobalancier channels the artist’s love of metallic 3D sculptures into the watchmaker’s signature star-shaped bridge, crafted in titanium to match the case and bracelet, as a trippy moiré effect rotor recalls his work with light reflection.
The Japanese proclivity for subversion also speaks to Bulgari, which credits Japan as not only its largest market, but where its artistic collaborations first began decades ago. “Japanese designers tend to have this disruptive approach,” says Antoine Pin, Bulgari’s Managing Director of Watches. “They love creativity and are extraordinarily sensitive to art and creation.” In recent years, Bulgari has collaborated with legendary architects such as Tadao Ando and the Pritzker Prize winning Kazuyo Sejima, both of whom have embraced Bulgari’s crowning ultra-thin Octo Finissimo watch as their canvas.
Bulgari’s head of watch design, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, says his love affair with Japanese art and culture first began as a boy growing up in 1970s Naples, Italy, where he was struck by Japanese Manga characters. In more recent times, working alongside Ando and Sejima has further cemented his understanding of why Japanese architects, as he puts it, are “masters of aesthetics” (so too did spending his last Christmas holidays in Japan).
“I appreciate how similar the Japanese and Italians are,” says Buonamassa Stigliani. “They have a natural aptitude to create beauty in a totally different way. They’re obsessive about details and perfection, but this comes from nature. They love nature – it’s God for the Japanese.” Nature’s fleeting, impermanent beauty also likely explains a Japanese cultural affinity with time, which obviously speaks to the heart of a watch designer.
