Back in the Muromachi period (approx. 1337 to 1573) the wadokei were invented, known as Japanese Temporal Time Keeping. It was a system that was sensitive to the changing of the seasons and varying undulations between the light and darkness of a day. Before they adopted the westernized style of time keeping, this system of measurement pertained to a bodily experience determined by a deep cosmological time. “[Wadokei] are divided into two sets of six units called “koku”. Each koku bears the name of one of the 12 noble animals of Japanese culture, from the rat to the boar, and were numbered in an unusual way. Midnight, the hour of the rat, was associated with number 9, while 6 represented dawn. The numbering continued, with the number 4 was the last koku before noon. As with midnight, number 9 also represented noon, and the sequence repeated itself along the afternoon and beginning of the night. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 were not used in Japan for religious reasons as they corresponded to the number of bell strokes used by Buddhist monks as a call for prayer. The crucial times in this seasonal system were the boundaries between daytime and nighttime. These points in time, at dawn and dusk, were defined as the times when three lines on a human hand became visible or invisible.” – From WorldTempus, 2012