A rare Japanese brass and iron 'yagura dokei' lantern alarm wall clock by Hanbei Tsunefusa Murakami of Kyoto, circa 1790-1830, with weight driven verge escapements controlled by separate foliot balances striking on a bell with a double ended hammer, one iron upright with seven character signature, the rectangular case with three hinged brass side plates, the circular chapter ring engraved with twenty-four characters centred with a revolving pierced hand, height 27.5cm, with two weights, one with stamped seal marks, together with a later wood wall bracket. Note: Japanese traditional timekeeping practices required the use of unequal time units: six daytime units from local sunrise to local sunset, and six night-time units from sunset to sunrise. As such, Japanese timekeepers varied with the seasons, with daylight hours longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the opposite at night. After the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan abolished the use of the Temporal hour system and switched to the Western 24-hour system. This clock is rare in the fact that it is signed, as mentioned in 'The Evolution of Clockwork with a Special Section on the Clocks of Japan' by J. Drummond Robertson: |It is an unfortunate circumstance that Japanese clocks, with the rarest exceptions, should be unsigned and undated|.