Eco-Drive 50th Anniversary Limited Edition
Eco-Drive with Annual Accuracy of ± 5 Seconds
Hand-dyed Green
Washi Paper Dial Model
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A new colour.
Born from indigo.
Brimming with life.
Indigo combined with natural plant-dye
made from Japanese silver grass.
Vivid green brimming with life.
A colour with over a millennium of history.
A colour that will become part of your life.
Features
A contemporary expression of
Japanese history and culture.
A green washi dial dyed with
silver grass and indigo
Eco-Drive, the world’s pioneering light-power technology, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. To mark this milestone, The CITIZEN set itself a challenge: to create a wholly new kind of watch dial by looking back over Japan’s more than one-thousand-year-old dyeing culture and giving a contemporary update to traditional techniques.
A symbol of life and the natural world through all four seasons, green has been a popular colour in Japan since time immemorial. But extracting green dye from a single natural ingredient is extremely hard. Since the eighth-century Nara period, vivid greens have traditionally been made by combining blue dye from the indigo plant with yellow dye of plant origin. This was the technique we selected to take The CITIZEN’s expertise in making hand-dyed indigo Tosa washi dials to the next level and create a new form of expression: a green washi paper dial made with all-natural plant dyes. We joined forces with Watanabe’s, an indigo dye workshop in Tokushima that has the capability to repurpose ancient techniques for contemporary ends. The upshot was a vivid green washi dial alive with Japanese history and culture—a truly one-of-a-kind dial that only The CITIZEN could have created.
A rare yellow dye.
Made from silver grass.
Nurtured by history
Choosing the best yellow plant dye to use to in combination with indigo was far from easy. We experimented with a variety of plants from marigold to lemon before finally settling on Japanese silver grass. Known as kariyasu in Japanese, this perennial grass has been used for dyeing ordinary clothing and fancy kimonos since the Nara period over 1,200 years ago.
There are different varieties of silver grass. However, only one of them—Ibuki kariyasu, a silver grass that grows in the vicinity of Mt. Ibuki in Shiga—produces a dye with a pedigree grand enough to earn a mention in the Engishiki, a tenth-century Japanese legal compendium. A soft yellow colour that radiates subtle warmth, the beauty of the dye reflects its origins in Japan’s magnificent mountain landscape. Working from a deep respect for ancient dye techniques and all-natural, time-old ingredients, we layered the two colours to create the ravishing green of the dial.
Time and dedication are needed
for the unique green to reveal itself
Our aim was to create a Japanese green distinctive and refined enough to commemorate Eco-Drive’s milestone 50th anniversary. A sturdy evergreen, the pine tree has long served as an emblem of steadfastness in Japanese culture. As a brand, The CITIZEN aspires to become an integral part of users’ lives. For that reason, a green close to pine needles seemed the most suitable tone.
Again, getting there was not easy. The yellow derived from silver grass is inherently unstable, so achieving just the right tone is a delicate task. In our quest for the perfect pine-needle green, we first put the washi through multiple cycles of dyeing and drying to securely fix the yellow, before going on to dip it in indigo. But darker indigo produced a green that was too blue, while a lighter indigo produced a green that was too yellow. Because even small variations in the indigo’s concentration significantly altered the final colour, getting precisely the green we wanted involved plenty of split-second decision-making. In his commitment to getting just the right tone, the master dyer made countless samples, and the dignified green of our imagination only materialised after lengthy trial and error. Attained through a process twice as grueling as that of our hand-dyed indigo washi paper dial models, the green washi dial manifests subtle changes of expression depending on how the light strikes it, as it progresses serenely through time.
50 years of Eco-Drive technology:
Elegance down to the last detail
As a brand, The CITIZEN sets great store on the extreme precision of its Eco-Drive with Annual Accuracy of ± 5 Seconds models. It is also committed to a user experience characterised by absolute peace of mind. This Eco-Drive 50th Anniversary Limited Edition embodies The CITIZEN ideal of a watch that becomes an integral part of the user’s life. The Super Titanium™ case, which sets off the eye-catching dial to maximum advantage, has been treated with DURATECT Platinum for a vivid, almost translucent tone, elevated scratch resistance and an enduring shine. Meanwhile the combined hairline and mirror finishes of the bracelet radiate serenity. Other features, including a perpetual calendar (requiring no adjustment until February 28, 2100), enhanced magnetic resistance and a shock counteraction function, make for a model that is highly accurate, solidly reliable and robust enough for everyday use.
Line Up
Crafting the next ideal:
The CITIZEN
The eagle mark:
Symbol of The CITIZEN
The eagle symbolises The CITIZEN’s twin commitments to “looking ahead and pursuing the ideal” and to “becoming an integral part of users’ lives.” The mark is discreetly engraved on the dial and crown of some models.
The master artisans who
breathe life into our watches
The CITIZEN watches are made at CITIZEN's special watch workshop nestled deep in the Nagano countryside. They are hand-assembled down to the last component by our highly experienced master watchmaking Meisters.
