Parris daCosta Hayashima

Parris daCosta Hayashima was founded by three close friends — Richard Parris, Thomas daCosta, and Satoshi Hayashima — who set out to build a watch brand around a simple refusal: no big-name ambitions, no high volume, nothing that could be rushed. The company is registered as Parris daCosta Hayashima K.K. and based in Akasaka, Fukuoka, on Japan's southern island of Kyushu, and its entire identity rests on a genuine partnership between Swiss and Japanese craft rather than either country simply supplying parts to the other. Their stated inspirations are quality of manufacture, hand finishing, local craftsmanship, and the kind of expertise that takes generations to build — values reflected in a deliberately slow release pace of one new model every several years, each limited to 25 individually numbered pieces.

That partnership runs through two specific places: Fleurier, in the Val de Travers region of the Canton of Neuchâtel, and Yame, in Fukuoka Prefecture. Fleurier is watchmaking heartland — home to Parmigiani Fleurier and the Chopard manufacture, with Bovet and Dimier nearby in Môtiers, and Neuchâtel itself, birthplace of Abraham-Louis Breguet and now home to Bulgari, a short drive away. Yame, by contrast, is Kyushu tea country, and also home to generations of master woodworkers. In developing both of their watches, the founders worked directly with craftsmen across Fleurier, Les Bayards, the Jura Valley, Le Locle, Meyrin, La Chaux-de-Fonds, and Kyushu, refining every material, decoration, and finish by hand rather than delegating the process to a single supplier.

Konpeki, released in 2019, was the brand's debut and takes its name from an ancient Japanese shade of deep blue traditionally pigmented from ground lapis lazuli; the watch's spirit draws on the zen philosophy behind Japanese tea ceremony, or sado — elegance, simplicity, truth, stillness, and focus. Its 40.5mm stainless steel case, machined by Les Artisans Boîtiers in La Chaux-de-Fonds, houses the PdCH01, a customised Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier calibre 5401 with an off-centred tungsten micro-rotor integrated directly into the mainplate, a variable inertia balance, and rhodium-plated bridges decorated in Côtes de Genève, running at 3Hz with 48 hours of reserve across 160 components and 29 jewels. The ivory-white grained dial carries Konpeki-blue applied numerals, indices, and dauphine hands to match the movement's own blue-tinted screws. Its hand-stitched black crocodile strap — each one requiring over 20 hours of glueing, stitching, bevelling, burnishing, painting, waxing, and polishing — came from Kyushu craftsman Mr. Ishikawa, and its solid camphor-wood presentation box, built using traditional Japanese all-wood joinery from trees over a century old, came from master joiner Mr. Hieda. All 25 pieces, priced around 11,250 USD, sold out.

Kagamimochi, the brand's second watch, takes its name from a traditional Japanese New Year decoration — two stacked round rice cakes dating to the Muromachi period, whose form the watch echoes in profile, with its bezel sitting atop the main case like the smaller mochi on the larger. Its 39mm case, offered in 316L steel, 18K white gold, and 18K 4N rose gold, is manufactured by La Fabrique du Temps, part of the Louis Vuitton Group, with the gold versions bearing both an LV case-back stamp and Swiss gold hallmarks; the ivory-white and salmon dials, lightly grained with a voluminous wet-look print, come from Metalem in Le Locle, with a subdial recessed a tenth of a millimetre below the surface. Inside is the PdCH02, again built on Vaucher's 5401 micro-rotor architecture but hand-finished under consulting watchmaker Emmanuel Bouchet and his colleagues at Maclef Sarl in Les Bayards. Priced at 12,000 CHF in steel and 30,000 CHF in either gold, and limited to 25 pieces, Kagamimochi was entered into the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Watchmaking, though it did not advance to the semi-finals.

Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier, the movement partner behind both calibres, was founded in 2003 as the in-house movement specialist of the Parmigiani Fleurier Group, and also supplies Richard Mille, Harry Winston, Corum, Fabergé, and Hermès. The brand's watches are photographed by Atsuyuki Shimada and have been covered in the Japanese horology press, including Sekai no Ude Dokei; servicing is split between IGIMI Co. Ltd in Tokyo and Osaka and Vaucher's own workshop in Switzerland, and the brand has held collector events with retail partners such as Amplitude in Hong Kong.