Offering arguably the world’s widest choice of watches, Japan’s Seiko has been playing the venerable Swiss brands at their own game for decades, says Chris Hall.

Some of you will already be wondering what we are doing writing about Seiko in what is supposed to be a luxury watch column.

True, you can buy a Seiko on Amazon for £30 and, being Japanese, the company has never been sniffy about digital or quartz technology in the same way as the Swiss brands. But there’s nothing wrong with its entry-level watches – the Seiko 5 is hands-down the cheapest way to own a mechanical watch (versions abound, starting at about £60) and is an icon in its own right, having been on sale since 1963.

What’s remarkable is that the company behind this humble ticker also produces minute repeaters and tourbillons; high-end mechanical watches adorned with masterful decoration and fine movements within. It is no exaggeration to say that Seiko offers one of the widest choices of watches in the world.

It’s not all perfect – the recently introduced Grand Seiko Sport range leaves a lot to be desired stylistically, and the Astron collection, with its GPS link-up, feels rather 1990s – but with its Grand Seiko and Credor watches, Seiko can match up to any mainstream Swiss brand in terms of quality and craftsmanship.

For many, here lies part of its charm. Seiko has been getting up the noses of the Swiss since the 1960s, when it started turning up to official timekeeping competitions and – within a couple of years
– sweeping the board. The Swiss hadn’t even contemplated a foreign entrant, let alone one so competent, and promptly took their ball away in a fit of national pique.

Undeterred, Seiko continued to innovate at a rapid pace. It made a name for itself in the world of professional dive watches in the 1970s – becoming, along the way, the first company to use titanium in a watch case, a full decade before IWC and Porsche Design would make the same claim.

It developed the quartz watch movement (something that would at a stroke cripple the Swiss watch industry) and went on to create multiple ingenious hybrid movements – the Kinetic and Spring Drive, both worth articles in their own right – ensuring it had something of good value at every level of the market.

You could be excused a level of ignorance over Seiko’s more interesting watches and history – the brand is not the best at getting the story out there, and for decades has not marketed Grand Seiko, Credor or even its coolest dive watches to a UK audience. That is changing, slowly – at Seiko, everything is very deliberate – and, later this month, it is opening its first dedicated UK store, in London’s Knightsbridge. That in itself has been a long time coming – everything had to be just right – but it should herald a period of greater attention for watch fans in the UK.

Perfectionism comes at least as naturally to the Japanese as to the Swiss, and the obsession over hand-finishing is equally strong. Seiko’s high-end pieces benefit from zaratsu polishing – techniques honed over centuries of knife and sword creation, miniaturised for the hands or indexes of a watch. The lines of a Grand Seiko case are as crisp and clean as anything around – not for nothing do connoisseurs hold them up as Rolex rivals.

This year, Seiko has given the Grand Seiko sub-brand a bit more of its own identity (after nearly 60 years), removing “Seiko” from the dials and letting it go out with just “Grand Seiko” at 12 o’clock.

Yes, this is letting one’s hair down, Seiko style, but you can’t scoff at the results. The move is being marked by the release of three limited-edition watches that hark back to the first Grand Seiko designs from 1960. Available in stainless steel, 18-carat gold and platinum (itself a nod to the past, as the first Grand Seiko watches, intended as they were to rival the finest Swiss watches, were cased in platinum), they are some of the simplest, most elegant watches released this year.

Each is powered by a hand-wound mechanical movement – made in-house by Seiko, naturally – and measures 38mm across. The steel model (£5,000) is a little thicker than the other two, and stands out from the platinum with its blued steel seconds hand. A total of 1,960 pieces will be produced; there will be 353 of the gold (£18,000) and 136 of the platinum (£30,000). If that’s not motivation to visit the new boutique, I don’t know what is.

Chris Hall is editor of SalonQP.com