The Japanese ‘watch doctor’ who restores historic Swiss timepieces

There is hardly a more 'Swiss' industry than the watch industry, but it is not only the Swiss who are masters of the craft. Masaki Kanazawa from Japan, for example, is forging a remarkable career in Western Switzerland's ‘Watch Valley’. A documentary about Swiss watchmaking fascinated the then 17-year-old Kanazawa so much that he promptly decided to become a watchmaker himself. Today, 26 years later, he is a watch restorer at the Musée international d'horlogerie (MIH), or international clock-making museum, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town near the Swiss-French border which has been recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site for its watchmaking industry. “I’m by no means the most talented person,” Kanazawa tells SWI swissinfo.ch. “But I think I’m the right person for the job of restorer. As a member of the museum team, I understand the vision of this museum very well, and I am committed to deciphering the timepieces and the techniques of the past that have disappeared and ...