For all the attention lavished on the front of a watch—the dial, the hands, the indices, the complications—there’s a quiet, often overlooked component that carries both the burden and the soul of the timepiece. The caseback, that unassuming surface pressed against the wrist, holds the final word in engineering, the …

There are watchmakers, and then there are those rare visionaries who redefine what the craft can be. Asaoka is one of the latter. A self-taught Japanese master who rose entirely outside the Swiss ecosystem, Asaoka has not only proven that independent horology can thrive in Japan—he’s carved out a category …