Comments on: Is it Dragon O’Clock Yet? Japan’s Traditional Zodiac Clock

By: green_knight

green_knight — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 13:52:00 +0000

Could you explain the Kanji? Elsewhere ‘horse’ is 馬　and ‘dog’ 犬 – are these hour Kanji or zodiac Kanji?

By: Oliver Rothammer

Oliver Rothammer — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 03:38:00 +0000

Well, this is exactly what was used in the first Republic in France. After changing the political system, they also wanted to eradicate the other systems used until now. A new calender was created, with weeks consisting of 10 days, months consisting of 3 weeks and a year consisting of 12 months plus 5 or 6 (leap year) extra days. The days had 10 hours, with 100 minutes making an hour and 100 seconds making a minute. So, 1 republican hour was 2.4 conventional hours long, 1 rep. minute was 1.44 conv. minutes and 1 rep. second was 0.864 conv. seconds.
Although the calender was used until 1805, the decimal time was abolished in less than a year.
For more, check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

By: kaminix

kaminix — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:11:00 +0000

Always wondered this. Thanks!

By: Jonadab

Jonadab — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:49:00 +0000

I’m just waiting for some moron^H^H^H^H^H^H unnecessarily clever person to try to introduce a metric timekeeping system, with 14.4-minute-long “centidays”, 86.4-second-long “millidays”, and 3.65 “hectodays” in a year (3.66 in a leap year).

By: Ken Seeroi

Ken Seeroi — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 07:02:00 +0000

That was a very interesting post. I gotta get me a wristwatch like that.

On a related note, don’t you think it’s amazing that the Japanese still maintain a separate system for keeping track of years, so that 2012 is Heisei 24? All Japanese people have to know how to write the year in both Western format and Japanese format. Crazy.

By: pinkcatmints

pinkcatmints — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 06:25:00 +0000

Ahh! That`s the one I know of. I remember thinking it had something to do with orientation, but missed the entire clock concept. As always, thank you Hashi for the enlightenment~ I still don`t think I truly understand how it works…but it sounds like the system did not work well at all in the first place.