Frumer, Yulia (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 2018
Language: English
Physical Details: 272 pp.
What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything—it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In Making Time, Yulia Frumer upends this assumption, using changes in the conceptualization of time in Japan to show that humans perceive time as constructed and concrete. In the mid-sixteenth century, when the first mechanical clocks arrived in Japan from Europe, the Japanese found them interesting but useless, because they failed to display time in units that changed their length with the seasons, as was customary in Japan at the time. In 1873, however, the Japanese government adopted the Western equal-hour system as well as Western clocks. Given that Japan carried out this reform during a period of rapid industrial development, it would be easy to assume that time consciousness is inherent to the equal-hour system and a modern lifestyle, but Making Time suggests that punctuality and time-consciousness are equally possible in a society regulated by a variable-hour system, arguing that this reform occurred because the equal-hour system better reflected a new conception of time — as abstract and universal—which had been developed in Japan by a narrow circle of astronomers, who began seeing time differently as a result of their measurement and calculation practices. Over the course of a few short decades this new way of conceptualizing time spread, gradually becoming the only recognized way of treating time.
...MoreReview Victor Seow (2021) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 420-427).
Review Mark Ravina (2019) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". American Historical Review (pp. 221-222).
Review David Wittner (April 2021) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". Technology and Culture (pp. 600-602).
Review Takehiko Hashimoto (2020) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (pp. 180-183).
Review Annick Horiuchi (2019) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 137-139).
Review Wei Yu Wayne Tan (2019) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 465-467).
Review Yuto Ishibashi (2019) Review of "Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 207-208).
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