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Japanese sundial
Like most astronomical and horological conventions in Japan before the advent of the Europeans, sundials were probably imported during the Asuka period (6th century AD) from T'ang China. The sundial most useful to the Japanese temporal system was used, and came to be more Japanese than Chinese. It is of an archaic design called a 'scaphe', or more accurately, a 'hemispherium', reputed to have been invented by a Chaldean priest-astronomer called Berosus in the 3rd century BC. The Japanese scaphe was a concave hemisphere with six hour divisions inscribed on the surface and a gnomon on a perpendicular axis. It measured the daylight hours equally for the given solar declination. This system was perfectly suited to the Japanese system of varying the hour duration according to the season. Many pocket sundials are in the shape of a small 18th-century watch. In one side is the scaphe, and in the other the compass. Often around the circumference of one or both the Twelve Terrestial Branches are engraved, and sometimes the Ten Celestial Stems as well. These refer to the sexagenary calendar and to the other cultural associations related to time and the celestial cycles. The characters were placed so that sunset and sunrise were in the east-west axis, and midnight and noon were in the north-south axis, respectively. The numbers corresponding to the hours were engraved either on the rim around half the circumference, or on the central axis (east-west) of the scaphe.
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- Category: Clock
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