THE CITIZEN HAS ARRIVED

The Japanese giant is expanding its global footprint of higher end watches

- Bilal Khan

Citizen's "The Citizen' collection of higher end watches has some of the most impressive and compelling releases coming out of Japan these days. Sure, the name is a little redundant, but there is so much on offer here for independent-minded enthusiasts looking for something unusual before it goes too mainstream. Their AQ4100-65W embodies this spirit and emerged as one of the most impressive sleeper watches in the sub-US $5,000 'everyday wear' category.

The AQ4100-65W demurely belies the fact that it has a whole lot going for it both on and just beneath the surface. The dial is inarguably the star here, with a finish referred to as Tosa washi, which is named after a type of very lightweight and thin Japanese paper. In specific, this watch uses the nearly transparent Tengu-Jo washi as inspiration for the base of the dial. Not just marketing fluff to tie the watch back to flourishing-sounding Japanese techniques, it is named so because of the fact that light must transmit through the dial in order to charge the photovoltaic cell of the solarpowered Eco-Drive movement.

The base of the dial is then finished in a way that hearkens to a decorative technique called Sunago-maki in which a sieve is used to sprinkle shredded platinum leaf onto the washi paper. The result here truly makes it feel like these historic techniques were effortlessly transferred onto a watch dial. In fact, the dial of the AQ4100-65W is done in collaboration with paper manufacture Hidakawashi who created the paper for the dial and Urushi Sakamoto, which is a famed lacquerware workshop that applied the platinum leaf onto the dial.

A fine balance has to be struck