Seiko still has a few surprises up their sleeve from time to time, and their latest release, a one-off made for brand ambassador Shohei Ohtani, is exactly that. The watch is called the Star Time, and it uses a series of discs to cumulatively track the hours. A whole lot of hours. Like over 114 years worth of hours. The idea is to mirror the gradual, near imperceptible movement of the stars across the vast distances of our galaxy. Seiko has presented the one-off watch, which will not be offered for sale, to Ohtani in response to a 2023 query by the reigning MLB MVP, “How much longer can I keep going as a baseball player?”
The theme may seem a bit strange on its face, and it certainly is, but there are layers here that presumably speak to Seiko’s broader relationship with Ohtani, which now spans 10 years, as well as cultural significance in how it’s been executed. This watch comes just months after Grand Seiko announced their own partnership with Ohtani, a move that neglected any mention of Seiko itself, though clearly the relationship remains unbroken.
So what is going on with this watch? There are no hands, instead there are a series of five discs that get progressively more useless conceptual toward the perimeter. At the center, things begin with a 24 hour disc that features an oversized number 17 in red, a nod to the number worn by Ohtani. Moving out a layer we find a disc that will track up to 1,000 hours, followed by a disc that tracks 10,000 hours, 100,000 hours, and finally, 1,000,000 hours. Each is marked by a diamond, and obviously, they will move at progressively slower speeds the further out they are.
The discs themselves each sit on their own layer, creating a sloping effect when viewed from the side. The entire watch, which is rendered in high-intensity titanium, measures over 17mm in thickness, and nearly 42mm in diameter. The design itself uses steps of sort to reduce visual heft of the design, and it comes together with a noticeable curvature. Overall wearability won’t mean much as only a single example is being produced, but it could provide the basis for future concepts from the brand.
Obviously, this entire watch is an exercise in the conceptual nature of the accumulation of time, and one that seems to speak to Ohtani personally, as he was consistently involved in the production, including selecting the design itself. It does use a mechanical movement, which does make a brief appearance in the video released by Seiko, but not much additional information is provided on a technical front.
Perhaps we’ll see a commercial variation of this watch down the line, probably without the diamonds. In fact, in some ways this watch appears to give a small nod to the Seiko SCBS005 and 007, aka the ‘Discuss Burger’, which also uses a series of discs to display the time. I think a watch that landed right between the two would be quite compelling, personally. Either way, I’m always happy to see weird stuff like this from Seiko, even if it is in one-off form. Seiko
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