Art of Masters

Patek Philippe's sixth and latest Watch Art Grand Exhibition, held from June 10 to 25 in Tokyo, was a love letter to Japan. Prestige discovers the manufacture's enduring relationship with the country at the showcase's highly anticipated opening.

- CRYSTAL LEE

The Japanese have long held a fascination for Patek Philippe's timepieces. In the watchmaker's customer registers, records of patrons from the Land of the Rising Sun date as far back as the late Edo period and the Meiji Restoration, corresponding to the earliest decades of the manufacture's activity.

It all began when statesman and ambassador Iwakura Tomomi led a delegation of over 50 senior government officials to the United States and Europe.

The goal was to learn more about the political, military and educational systems of the Western world in order to revise the Unequal Treaties and re-establish themselves among the dominant world powers.

Part of the itinerary of the Iwakura Mission was a visit to Patek Philippe's Geneva headquarters in 1873. Guided by its visionary founder Antoine Norbert de Patek, the meeting was reported in detail across three pages in the official journal Beiou-Kairan Jikki.

Soon, Japanese dignitaries were acquiring Patek Philippe's watches - directly in Europe or through the intermediary of European trading companies active in Japan.

This admiration for the Swiss luxury watchmaker only grew over the years, prompting the brand to officially import its timepieces into Japan in the 1950s, as well as establish its Japanese subsidiary PP Patek Inc. in 2003. Today, Japan represents a key market for the brand - an audience of connoisseurs that treasures rare handcrafts and appreciates the savoir faire contained in a Patek Philippe timepiece. The snaking queue of about 200 people that formed outside its Watch Art Grand Exhibition in Tokyo on the opening day is further proof of the Japanese's reverence for the brand.

HONOURING A LEGACY