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In a German newspaper article an interviewed professor says:

> For a long time the Japanese didn't have any interest in clocks: Until 1871,
> there hadn't even been a word for time and therefore no time measurement.

(Original text:)

> Auch die Japaner hatten lange kein Interesse an der Uhr: Bis 1871 hatten sie
> nicht mal ein Wort für die Zeit und daher auch keine Zeitmessung.

(Text available in German [here](http://www.zeit.de/2017/02/zeit-empfinden-
uhren-stress-zeitforscher-karlheinz-geissler/seite-3).)

Is it true that there was no word for time before the Meiji Restoration? Which
word is he referring to? 時間 or the kanji 時?
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translation etymology history culture time
No word for "time" until 1871?
I think the word [時間]{じかん} was created in the Meiji era, but the word [時]{とき}
is older. So it's definitely wrong that "the Japanese didn't have any interest
in clocks (until 1871)".

I searched in an [old-Japanese
dictionary](http://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E6%99%82) and found the usage of
「とき」 in 竹取物語:

> [宵]{よひ}うち[過]{す}ぎて、[子]{ね}のときばかりに

Here, the word [子]{ね}のとき refers to a certain time which is around midnight.

竹取物語 was written more than 1000 years ago. So the word 「とき」 is at least 1000
years old.
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## Addendum

The word 時{とき} is probably the oldest native Japanese word for "time". This
term appears in the
[万葉集{まんようしゅう}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dsh%C5%AB) written in
Old Japanese and compiled from poems composed from the 300s through the 700s,
completed some time after 759 CE. These are some of the oldest surviving
examples of written Japanese, suggesting that this term is quite ancient
indeed. Consequently, claiming that ancient Japanese had no word for "time" is
patently wrong.

The Japanese language also has the Chinese-derived _on'yomi_ term 時刻{じこく},
also used to refer more specifically to the concept of "hour", as in "a
specific length of time in a day". This term appears in the 平家{へいけ}物語{ものがたり}
dating to the 1100s. Even prior to that, we know that the [Ritsuryō legal
system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritsury%C5%8D) in place from the mid
600s through the Nara period ending 794 made use of water clocks to track the
passage of time during a day: definite evidence of the _Zeitmessung_ ("time
measurement") that Professor Geißler mentions. In the traditional reckoning,
each day consisted of 12 hours: 6 of day, and 6 of night. This meant that the
length of a daylight hour and of a nighttime hour changed over the course of
the year, with the shift of the seasons. Consequently, an argument could be
made that the traditional Japanese hour required a _greater_ awareness of time
than the western hour -- timekeepers would need to be much more intimately in
tune with time day-by-day in order to evenly distribute the number of hours in
a day and night.

[Even the western definition of "hour" has been known to some extent in Japan
since the 1500s,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#History) when
westerners brought their own clocks as gifts. So here too, Professor Geißler's
claim falls through.

The term 時間{じかん} itself, though apparently extant earlier, does seem to have
been repurposed in 1881 **as a specific translation of the western term "time"
in reference to philosophy**. The [Daijirin entry
here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%99%82%E9%96%93-72507#E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E6.9E.97.20.E7.AC.AC.E4.B8.89.E7.89.88)
explains:

> 〔明治初期には英語 time は「時・時刻」と訳され、「哲学字彙」（1881年）に訳語として「時間」と載る〕  
>    (The English term "time" was translated as 時{とき} or 時刻{じこく} at the start
> of the Meiji period [beginning 1868; here, likely including the 1870s], with
> the term 時間{じかん} appearing as a translation term in _Tetsugaku Jii_ (1881)
> ["Philosophical Dictionary", compiled by [Inoue
> Tetsujirō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoue_Tetsujir%C5%8D)])

Notably, most (maybe all?) such "translation terms" were existing words in
Japanese that were repurposed to express more western concepts, such as
社会{しゃかい} "society", or 自由{じゆう} "freedom, liberty".

### Key points:

  * The concept of "time" clearly existed even in ancient Japanese culture.
  * The concept of "hour" as a specific span of time has also existed, for essentially the entirety of recorded Japanese history. Granted, that definition might have differed from the modern western concept, but it was a specific idea of "time measurement".
  * The main shifts related to "time" in the Meiji period were: 
    1. widespread translation of western materials in an urgent and strategic push to catch up technologically, leading to the rejiggering of various cultural ideas, including "time", and 
    2. the promulgation of the Gregorian calendar and western-style 24-hour day, as opposed to the traditional 12-hour day, with six hours of day and six hours of night.

### Conclusion

You had specifically asked:

> Is it true that there was no word for time before the Meiji restauration?

**No** , that is not true.

> What word is he [Professor Geißler] referring to? 時間 or the kanji 時?

Professor Geißler is far enough off-base that **I don't think he's referring
to any specific term** -- I suspect he doesn't know enough about Japanese
history or the language for either term to be immediately relevant to his
statement.

Professor Geißler clearly got the wrong end of the stick. I note that [he is
apparently a Professor of _Wirtschaftspädagogik_ , or "economics
pedagogy"](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Gei%C3%9Fler), with no
apparent work in Japanese history, culture, or language. In his defense, it is
easy to misapprehend things outside of one's field of expertise.
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The installation of the Gregorian calendar was on 1872.

It doesn't mean Japanese didn't have a concept of time, they used a lunar
calendar (different one from Chinese).

They had [a Japanese clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock)
which divides a day in six and a night in six.
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