I often see questions on various watch forums from posters asking if there are any books available about Seiko watches. To address this, I’ve put together a listing of the Seiko reference literature that I have along with a few other books containing notable references to Seiko watches. Hopefully this will serve as a good resource for the GMT+9 readers.
Name: Elektriek am Handgelenk
Author: Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld
Publisher: Engelsdorfer Verlag, 2007
Language: German
ISBN: 3-86703-476-1
Number of Pages: 636
Seiko Pages: About 50
Pictures: Thousands
Content: The history and technique of electric, electronic and quartz watches 1956-2006
Comments: This book seems to have every battery based wristwatch ever made. It is an excellent book, well illustrated with one or more pictures of every watch, including caliber pictures and diagrams. The book also lists technical details and functions of every caliber and has detailed descriptions of the technical solutions of the different types of calibres. Only complaint is that the book is somewhat lacking on information such as production years and accuracy.
Rating: 5 (4 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.de (EUR 70)
Name: Chronograph Wristwatches – To Stop Time
Author: Gerd-R Lang, Reinhard Meis
Publisher: Shiffer Publishing, 1993
Language: English (also available in German)
ISBN: 0-88740-502-9
Number of Pages: 250
Seiko Pages: About 5
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: Everything about Chronograph Wristwatches
Comments: A comprehensive listing with pictures of most vintage chronograph watches including technical descriptions and pictures of watches and calibers. The first 75 pages is an excellent description of the technical aspects of a chronograph. This book, while excellent in content and scope, has too little Seiko content to be necessary for the Seiko collector.
Rating: 5 (1 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.com (USD 60)
Name: Automatic Armbanduhren
Author: Heinz Hampel
Publisher: Callwey Verlag, 1996
Language: German (also available in English)
ISBN: 3-7667-1228-4
Number of Pages: 216
Seiko Pages: About 50
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: Watches from Germany, England, Japan, Russia and the US
Comments: This book has a good listing of Seiko automatic calibres until the mid 80s. Each caliber is accompanied by technical details, a dial picture of an example watch and pictures of the caliber with and without the autowinder. Most pictures are in black and white. As the book focuses on the calibres, it has very few details on the different Seiko brands and is also short on history and development of the calibres. It also has decent sections on Citizen, Orient and Ricoh. Relatively low price makes it a good purchase.
Rating: 4 (3 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.de (EUR 25)
Name: The Alarm Wristwatch
Author: Michael Philip Horlbeck
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing, 2007
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-7643-2644-8
Number of Pages: 232
Seiko Pages: 3
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: The history of mechanical alarm wristwatches
Comments: This book is very similar to the Chronograph book described above. It has an initial section on the technical details of the alarm caliber and another section with descriptions and pictures of the different watches and calibres. As Seikos only mechanical alarm caliber is the Bellmatic, its presence in the book is limited.
Rating: 5 (1 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.com (USD 60)
Name: The Seiko Book
Author: N/A
Publisher: Town Mook, Tokuma Shoten, 1999
Language: Japanese
ISBN: 4-19-710056-6
Number of Pages: 194
Seiko Pages: 194
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: The full Seiko history with chapters on Grand Seiko, Marvel and Cronos, Seiko Quartz, Kinetic, Design, Seiko Sports with lots of pictures of watches, advertising, schematics and Seiko people.
Comments: This is the definitive book on Seiko history. For non-Japanese speakers, some of the text is reproduced in the English-language version of A Journey in Time. The book is strong on interviews and descriptions of the process behind the Seiko research and development of watches but also has a good picture content of numerous watches, both vintage and modern, newspaper clippings, advertising and technical drawings. The chapters on Grand Seiko and the 1960s Chronometer competitions seem particularly solid. The Seiko Book is also the original source of the Seiko caliber tables that exist on the web. I would not say that this book is as crucial for the non-Japanese speaking Seiko collector as the museum book described below as the best content of the book is the Japanese text.
Rating: 5 (5 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Japanese Auctions (approx JPY 6-8,000)
Name: Museum of Japanese Watches
Author: N/A
Publisher: World Photo Press, 2000
Language: Japanese
ISBN: 4-8465-2027-7
Number of Pages: 224
Seiko Pages: about 80
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: This book is a listing of about 300 Japanese watches with pictures
Comments: For picture content of individual watches, this book is probably better than “The Seiko Book”. The museum book has individual pictures of high quality of most interesting Japanese watches, split more or less equally between Seiko, Citizen and other. Each watch is presented with dial, caseback and movement pictures and a short descriptory text. Unfortunately, some watches are given a whole page each and some only a quarter page, with the result that the pictures get very small. This book would be necessary for any Seiko collector and the lack of knowledge of Japanese is not an issue as the picture material is excellent.
Rating: 5 (5 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Japanese Auctions (approx JPY 6-8,000)
Name: The Museum Series
Author: Nagao Yoshio et al
Publisher: Tombow Shuppan
Language: Japanese
ISBN: 4-88716-097-6 (Volume 1)
4-88716-099-2 (Volume 3)
4-88716-101-8 (Volume 5)
4-88716-103-4 (Volume 7)
4-88716-105-0 (Volume 9)
4-88716-108-5 (Volume 12)
Number of Pages: 56-72
Seiko Pages: 56-72
Pictures: About a hundred per book
Content: Handwind; Crown, Grand Seiko, Liner, Skyliner (Volume 1)
Handwind; Cronos, King Seiko, Goldfeather, Champion (Volume 3)
Auto; Gyro Marvel, Seikomatic, Sportsmatic (Volume 5)
Handwind; Super, Marvel, Lord Marvel, Sportsman (Volume 7)
Auto; Lord Marvel, GS, KS, LM, Bellmatic, 6138, 6139 (Volume 9)
Early Watches up to 1950 (Volume 12)
Comments: This is a 12 book series about Japanese watches with 6 books covering Seiko, 5 Citizen and one book covering Orient watches. The series is an excellent reference with about 20 colour pages in each book with the different types of watches including pictures of dial, caseback and calibre. The remaining part of each book is a text part with smaller and fewer black and white illustrations and information including prices, variants and technical information on each watch and caliber. The books also contains product timelines, caliber crossreferences and much more. These books are the ultimate reference books on Seiko and other Japanese watches and a lot of the information available on the web originated from these books. My only complaint would be that picture material is limited to straight forward back and front pictures with only a few supplemental pictures of cases, straps and similar. I would be worth learning Japanese just to have access to the information in this series.
Rating: 5 (5 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.co.jp (Volumes 3 and 12 only, JPY 2,520), Japanese auctions (Remaining volumes JPY 5,000-9,000)
Name: The Story of Evolution on the Special Watches of Seiko
Publisher: World Mook, 2008
Language: Japanese
ISBN: 978-4-8465-2763-1
Number of Pages: 184
Seiko Pages: 184
Pictures: Hundreds
Content: Chapters on the Landmaster, Fieldmaster, Scubamaster, Flightmaster, Professional Divers, Railroad Watches, Calculator Watch, TV Watch and many others.
Comments: The newest entry of the Seiko books is a book written by the Seiko master developer Ikuo Tokunaga, the brain behind most of Seikos modern watches and covers all of the watches where he has been involved in the development. The book is an excellent complement to the museum book and the Seiko Book as it mostly covers watches of the last 10-15 years. An index and example pages are available on the Tokunaga website . The picture material is excellent with technical drawings and exploded views showing all the components of a watch case. I can only assume that the text is as excellent as the pictures including also the philosophical asides that Tokunaga-san produce. The closing quote of the book is “Where there is a will, there is a way” which seems to be a good summary of the Tokunaga era.
Rating: 5 (5 for Seiko content)
Availablity: Amazon.co.jp (JPY 2,800)
Name: A Journey in Time, The Remarkable Story of Seiko
Author: John Goodall
Publisher: Seiko Watch Corporation, 2003
Language: English
ISBN:
Number of Pages: 114
Seiko Pages: 114
Pictures: About a hundred
Content: The official version of the Seiko history
Comment: The content of this book is similar to the Seiko Book and contains chapters on early history, Grand Seiko, quartz, kinetic and sports. Compared to the Seiko Book, this book has been shortened in respect of the detailed personal stories of Seiko designers and developers. While concentrating on the story of the company and its development rather than on particular watches, it is still the best available publication on Seiko history and its availability as a free pdf-file makes it an easy inclusion in any Seiko library.
Rating 5 (5 for Seiko content)