Nora Dokei Clock Tower

Nora Dokei is a wooden clock tower on a farmhouse in the Doi district of Aki City, on the coast of eastern Kochi Prefecture. Its name means "field clock," because farmers working the surrounding fields used it to tell the time. It dates from around 1887 and is a registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan. It stands on private land, so you view it from outside, and there is no charge.

History of the Nora Dokei

In the Meiji era few homes in rural Japan had a clock. Hatanaka Genma, a local landowner, had been given an American-made octagonal wall clock by his father as a boy. He took it apart and put it back together again and again until he understood how it worked.

Around 1887 he built his own clock, making every part by hand, and mounted it in a tower on top of his house. The clock faces look out over the fields, so people could check the time from a distance. Aki City's page on the field clock tells the story in Japanese.

Visiting the Nora Dokei

The tower is part of the Hatanaka family home. You can photograph it from the road and the field in front, but do not enter the property. The clock does not run all year. With the owner's cooperation, it is set going during the tourist season and for local events.

Local residents plant flowers in the field in front of the house. Sunflowers bloom here in summer, and cosmos follow in fall.

The clock is on the edge of Doi Kakuchu, Aki's old samurai quarter, now a preserved historic district of old walls and lanes. Most visitors walk the two together, and an hour is enough for both.

How to get to the Nora Dokei from Kochi

By train, ride to Aki Station on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway Gomen-Nahari Line, which you join from the JR Dosan Line at Gomen. From Aki Station, the Aki City community bus stops at Nora Dokei-mae, right by the clock.

By car, it is about 50 minutes from Nankoku IC on the Kochi Expressway, or about 20 minutes from Geisei-nishi IC on the Kochi Tobu Expressway. There is a free parking lot just east of the clock.

Combining Aki with east Kochi

Aki is a natural stop on a drive along the eastern coast. On the way from Kochi you pass Noichi Zoological Park, and farther east the road continues to the capes of the Muroto Geopark.

For more of the prefecture beyond Kochi City, see our overview of Kochi Prefecture.

Our guide to Shikoku's least-visited corners covers the rest of the island.