The Imagine Japan exhibition will open its doors on June 19th. The introductory part of this exhibition organized by the MEN was unveiled on the historically significant date of February 6, 2014, the official 150-year commemoration of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Switzerland and Japan.
Pocket watches that were imported to Japan by François Perregaux, the central character responsible for forging the first steps of Swiss watchmaking in the Land of the Rising Sun in the middle of the 19th century, were displayed during the exhibition.
Properties of the Girard-Perregaux Museum, these timepieces are a priceless testament of the links that have bonded together the Chaux-de-Fonds Maison and the Japanese archipelago for more than one and a half centuries. Numerous officials and dignitaries, including Georges Martin, Deputy Secretary of State to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and M. Yukihiro Nikaido, Ministre and Chargé d’affaires a.i, attended the commemorative ceremony.
As part of the 150th anniversary celebration, Girard-Perregaux is also presenting other watches in Tokyo that experienced the same fate, in The Mastery of Time exhibit, organized by the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH), of which the brand is a partner.
Aimé Humbert and François Perregaux
On February 6, 1864, in the Choji temple in Edo (Tokyo), a treaty of amity and commerce was signed between Switzerland an Japan, allowing Swiss watchmakers to officially export their products to the Japanese market. Aimé Humbert was the architect behind this first Swiss-Japanese treaty. Appointed as "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Swiss Confederation in Japan" by the Federal Council, Humbert landed on the island in April 1863 but was forced to wait nearly one full year before Japanese authorities agreed to discuss the matter. While waiting, he took advantage of these months to visit the country and collect testimonials, drawings, prints, and photographs which would eventually make up the base material of the book he planned to publish on Japan.
It was one of the oldest residents of the French-speaking community in Japan that welcomed Aimé Humbert and his Swiss companions in this country: watchmaker François Perregaux.
Born in 1834 to a family of important watch merchants from Le Locle, the brother of Marie Perregaux - who founded Girard-Perregaux with her husband Constant Girard - François Perregaux left Switzerland in 1859 for Asia. Commissioned by Union Horlogère to establish an export post, he set up shop in Yokohama in 1860, becoming the first Swiss watch merchant to be established in the Land of the Rising Sun. In 1865, the man originally from Le Locle founded the company F. Perregaux & Co in Yokohama and would be, until his death in 1877, the official representative of Girard-Perregaux.
Beginning before their meeting in Japan, the correspondence between François Perregaux and Aimé Humbert continued after Humbert's departure. The diplomat urged the watchmaker to keep him abreast of the activities and affairs going on within the country and to send him any oral accounts, stories or legends, that could further complete the items that he collected on-site. The fruit of Humbert's labor, Le Japon Illustré [Japan Illustrated], appeared in 1870 and was published in two volumes by Hachette in Paris.
