Seiko recently completed its second Incredibly Specialized Watch Exhibition, where the Japanese watchmaker sets its designers loose to create, um, incredibly specialized watches.
What is an incredibly specialized watch, you may be wondering? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a tool watch made for a ridiculously specific purpose.
The watches are concepts, not actual products, so the designers don’t really need to consider any practical limitations in their designs. As a result, this year’s event resulted in watches designed for Santa Claus, vampires and more.
Some of the designs are pretty out there, but one of the more realistic creations — and arguably the coolest — is a Seiko watch designed for real-life ninjas.
Ninja, Ninja, Watch!
While mostly recognized in Western society thanks to their prevalence in pop culture, ninjas did really exist in feudal Japan, where they acted as spies and assassins. Just like their fictional counterparts, these real-life ninjas operated in the shadows and relied on their stealthiness to conduct their covert missions.
Ninjas are associated with equipment such as shuriken (throwing stars) and katana blades, but watches were not among their arsenal — mainly because they didn’t exist yet. There are myriad ways in which ninjas were believed to have told time, from reading a cat’s eyes to monitoring the width of their nostrils to letting the stars be their guide.