Hisashige was a prominent inventor born in Kurume who lived and worked from late Edo to the early Meiji period. He was also a major figure in business as the founder of Shibaura Engineering Works, Japan’s first private machine works and the predecessor of one of the nations largest manufacturers of heavy electric machinery (current Toshiba Corporation). He came to be called "Karakuri Giemon," the “Thomas Edison in the East,” for his many elaborate inventions. As a youth he crafted Karakuri mechanical dolls, and later he produced masterwork clocks such as the "Man-nen Jimeisho," the most magnificent Japanese style clock ever made. Outside of his mainstay work as a researcher, developer, and producer of steam engines and cannons, he advanced Japanese technology in other fields by inventing various machines useful for daily life. Hisashige was one of the rare and ingenious mechanical engineers who established the foundations of Japan as a technological superpower.

Hisashige Tanaka was born as the eldest son of a tortoiseshell craftsman. At the age of nine he astonished his family and others by fashioning an "inkstone case with a secret lock" equipped with Karakuri mechanical figures. His eagerness to invent and create was first fueled by reading "Karakuri-zui," an illustrated anthology of mechanical techniques for Japanese clocks and Karakuri dolls and toys published by Hanzo Hosokawa in 1796. Hisashige was all set to inherit the family business as the eldest son, but he asked his father to let his younger brother take over instead. Thus unencumbered, he was free to live with his “Karakuri” and pursue success as an inventor.
Not content to merely copy the original techniques, Hisashige built the first "Karakuri mechanical dolls" to move by forces such as hydraulic pressure, gravity, and air pressure (pumps). His best-known masterpieces were “Yumi-Hiki Doji” (“arrow-shooting boy”), the “Moji-kaki doll” (“letter-writing doll”), and “Doji Sakazuki-dai” (“sake-cup stand in the shape of a little boy”). He traveled to many cities as a Karakuri mechanical doll entertainer, including Osaka, Kyoto and Edo.

In his middle thirties Hisashige moved to Osaka and produced "Kaichu Shokudai” (“the portable candle stand" ) and "Mujin-to” (“the long-burning lamp"). Later he took an interest in the Western clocks imported into the country from Europe. He began to study mathematics and the Western astronomical almanac.
Harnessing his knowledge and skill as an astronomer and engineer, he produced "Shumisengi" (*1), a Japanese-style clock that overturned the concept of the timepiece upon its completion in 1850. Shumisengi was a masterpiece that perfectly expressed the Buddhist cosmology based on geocentric astronomy. Figurines of the sun and moon revolved around Mt. Shumisen on the faces of the clock. He built the Shumisengi to educate the public about Buddhist cosmology and bolster his religion against the inflow of Copernican theory from the West.

In the following year, 1851, Hisashige completed what might fairly be described as his masterwork, the Man-nen Jimeisho chronometer. He based the design on the advanced astronomical almanac and Western timepiece techniques and crafted the work using his own techniques in metalwork, engraving, inlaid/cloisonné enamel work, and Karakuri. The chronometer is composed of more than 1000 parts, most of which he made by hand. This complicated Karakuri clock can run for a year on a single winding.
Beyond its core functions as a Western clock and Japanese clock, Man-nen Jimeisho sounds an alarm bell and displays the days of the week, the twenty-four divisions of the solar year, the ten stems and twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac (dates in the year of the old calendar), the ages of the moon, and a planetarium (yearly movements of the sun and moon, as viewed from Kyoto). All of the moving dials are interlocked and move in unison by the power of the spring located below.
The Japanese clock is equipped with an epoch-making mechanism that supports the seasonal time system, a type of hour that changes in length according to changes in the length of day and night in different seasons, by automatically repositioning and resetting the intervals of the index on the dial plate. This mechanism is enabled by the reciprocating the rotational motion of a wheel with two single gears attached alternately to a unique arrangement of smaller insect-shaped wheels.

Hisashige secured the accuracy of the Western clock component of Man-nen Jimeisho using the escapement mechanism of a Swiss-made pocket watch according to the original design. Based on the movement of the escapement, the mechanism interlocked with the segmented dial panel and hands of the Japanese clock.
The structure clearly expresses Hisashige's commitment "to accept advanced Western technologies and integrate them with Japanese culture in ways useful for society."

This perpetual clock broke down soon after Hisashige's death and has never been restarted in the years since. In 2004 the clock was overhauled for analysis and reassembled in a national project to restore the Man-nen Jimeisho perpetual clock. The researchers assigned to the task discovered complicated mechanisms that Hisashige had developed on his own, as well as clues revealing that Hisashige had made almost all of the parts by hand without machine tools, including the wheels and springs. (*2)
After completing the perpetual clock, Hisashige continued to produce many other unique timepieces with his unique inquiring mind, including his Makura-dokei pillow clock and Taiko-dokei; drum clock (the drum sounded on the hour and the cock crowed the time).

In 1881, Hisashige Tanaka, the "Thomas Edison in the East," passed away while still immersed in his never-ending pursuit of new inventions. Throughout the unquiet years from the end of Edo to the early Meiji period, he had perpetually explored the forefront inventions of his time and pursued inventions to entertain people. It seems fitting that Japan’s thriving and prosperous watchmaking industry traces all the way back to a Japanese inventor of unique and advanced clocks such as the perpetual clock and Shumisengi in the Edo period.