Page 98 - BFM F/W 2024

A Global Citizen
Citizen celebrates 100 years in watchmaking while looking to the future
By Jeremy Freed
CITIZEN PRODUCES A MORE VARIED RANGE OF WATCHES THAN almost any other brand, with everything from 1,000-metre professional divers to Super Titanium world-timers with light-powered movements regulated by satellite to the Caliber 0100, the most precise watch ever made. This year, however, the brand’s most important launch is something altogether different: a pocket watch. The 100th anniversary of the first Citizen watch Special Limited Edition Pocket Watch features a hand-wound movement set inside a 43.5 mm case made of polished titanium and an off-white dial whose texture evokes accumulating snow. Limited to just 100 pieces, it marks the brand’s centenary by celebrating its humble but auspicious beginnings.
In 1918, Kamekichi Yamazaki, a clock, watch, and jewellery trader, returned to Japan after a fact-finding mission to the United States and Switzerland. He had travelled abroad to learn about how companies in these nations made their clocks and watches, with the goal of creating a Japanese watch industry based on the best practices of the day. Soon afterwards, he founded the Shokosha Watch Research Institute, and in 1924 — following the suggestion of Tokyo’s mayor — rebranded the company as Citizen. The name change was both strategic and symbolic. The word “Citizen” fits nicely on a watch dial, of course, but more importantly, it speaks to the company’s mission to create accurate, durable, and reliable timekeeping instruments that regular people could afford. One hundred years later, the brand’s offerings have changed dramatically, but its mission remains the same.
The first piece to bear the Citizen name was a pocket watch with a clean, classical aesthetic and a hand-wound movement that would serve as the inspiration for the 2024 limited edition. By the 1920s, however, wristwatches were beginning to eclipse pocket watches in popularity, and in 1931 Citizen kept pace with the times by introducing the Citizen F, a simple yet reliable wristwatch that would be produced in a wide variety of forms for the next 25 years. By the 1950s, now well-established in Japan, Citizen began to focus more seriously on innovation. Its focus included improving shock resistance, water resistance, accuracy, and thinness, and it would demonstrate great strides toward these goals in the watches it released between 1956 and 1962. Among these were the Parashock, which was dropped out of a helicopter to prove its durability, the Parawater, which was tested by Kenichi Horie on the first solo non-stop sailing voyage across the Pacific, and the Diamond Flake, an ultra-thin dress watch whose movement measured just 2.75 mm thick.
Over the ensuing decades, Citizen’s innovation would only increase, with forays into electronic watches, tuning fork movements, titanium cases, and — foreshadowing things to come — the first light-powered watch with an analog display, in 1976. By the 1980s, Citizen’s constant focus on developing new technology allowed it to go where few watch brands had gone before. In 1982, the Citizen Professional Diver 1300 proved the brand’s supremacy in underwater timekeeping with a large rounded case secured by four visible screws and rated to an astonishing 1,300 metres. In 1985, the Citizen Aqualand became the first watch with an electronic depth gauge, and its signature orange broad arrow hand would go on to become the symbol of the brand’s Promaster range of professional watches that includes such 21st-century classics as the Promaster Dive “Ecozilla” and “Orca.”
In 1995, Citizen staked its claim as the leader in light-powered watches with the launch of Eco-Drive and has continued to refine this technology in the decades since. Thanks to an unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of technology, Citizen’s Eco-Drive lineup now includes recent releases such as the Eco-Drive 365, which boasts a one-year power reserve, the Eco-Drive One, whose movement is less than 1 mm thick, and the Caliber 0100, whose precision of just one second per year makes it the most accurate watch of any kind ever made.
Citizen’s 2024 launches reflect the diverse array of strengths the brand has cultivated over the last century, from the refinement of its 100th Anniversary Special Limited Edition Pocket Watch to the futuristic F150 Satellite Wave. With a cosmos-inspired dial and a 45.4 mm Super Titanium case, the latter uses satellite GPS timekeeping to display the exact time in one of 40 time zones in just three seconds. There are also new versions of fan favourites such as the Tsuyosa, an automatic mechanical watch with an integrated bracelet and a selection of 10 colourful dials, and archival editions such as the Promaster Fujitsubo, a Super Titanium watch based on a 1977 Citizen Challenge Diver found covered in barnacles (but still ticking) on an Australian beach.
Each of these pieces offers a unique combination of technology, design, and functionality. Still, they all share something in common beyond the name written across their dials. One hundred years after the release of its first timepiece, Citizen continues to make good on its founder’s ambitious vision to create an accessible Japanese watch brand to rival the best in the world, and every Citizen watch continues to embody that vision, inside and out.
98 BFM / FW24 WATCH / A GLOBAL CITIZEN