The clock is beautiful in proportions and very well preserved. Japanese table clocks with horizontal dials are rare, the majority of Japanese clocks being either of lantern type, bracket or pillar. The Japanese method of telling the time originated in China and was based on the natural day from dawn to dusk. Day and night were each divided into six segments of differing length. The day segments, for example, were longer in summer and shorter in winter. For this reason the hour markers had to be adjustable. The dial begins with the number "9" and goes backwards 9,8,7,6,5,4, because the Japanese considered that 9 was a magic number. Since a clock was an important and mysterious object in i self, it was desirable to have the mystical number present in every hour, as well as to directly attribute it to midnight and noon. The other hours were multiplied by the number 9 and the second digit of the product was taken as the clock hour for example, hour 2 was in fact 8 because 2 x 9 = 18. In Japan every hour had a name, similar to our weeks, in which the days are not numbered from 1 to 7, but have names: Monday to Sunday. Traditional Japanese hours were named after the Chinese zodiacal signs, midnight bottom of the dial being "rat", midday top of the dial "horse", sunrise to the left "hare", sunset to the right "cock", and so on.