There is a handmade clock tower standing among the fields. Doi Kakuchū in Aki is the samurai quarter of the castle town, and along its lanes run bamboo hedges and clipped ubame oak. Ubame is hard, grows densely, and stands up to salt wind, which is why it was chosen for hedging in a place this close to the sea — the plant list of a district is usually a weather report.

The clock nearby is called the Nora-dokei, the field clock, and it is said to have been built single-handedly by a local man working out the mechanism for himself, without training and without a model to copy. Doi Kakuchū was designated an Important Preservation District in July 2012, and samurai residences survive here as standing buildings rather than as marked sites with signboards on them. This is a city of about sixteen thousand people; Kōchi is roughly fifty minutes away by car; and the Gomen–Nahari line runs through it, which is how most people without a car arrive.

Building your own clock means you needed the time. Field work follows the height of the sun and does not require anything more precise, but assembling people, dividing them into groups and sending them out does require a shared hour that everybody accepts — so a clock tower was as much a piece of agricultural equipment as a civic ornament. That is why it stands where it stands. It was put up at the point where the largest number of people were already gathering to work, which is where a clock is useful and where it will actually be looked at. Nobody builds one for a view.