Grand Seiko has long drawn inspiration from the landscapes surrounding its studios. The brand’s designers consistently return to the marvel of nature: the colour gradient of leaves that flare and fall in autumn, the way winter light shimmers across icicles, and the rhythm of the wind brushing over still water. In Shinshu, these observations are translated into textures, colours, and movements captured in watchmaking.
Its latest release, the SLGA021 from the Evolution 9 Collection, embodies that philosophy in a single moment: the ripples that glide across the surface of Lake Suwa before dawn. Its dial captures that fleeting scene with a deep blue that changes under light, recalling the lake’s shimmering reflections as the breeze moves.
The watch is driven by the calibre 9RA2 Spring Drive movement. Developed and assembled at the Shinshu Watch Studio, it provides a five-day power reserve and an impressive ±10 seconds per month accuracy—achieved through a hybrid mechanism that combines mechanical energy with an electronic regulator.
Unlike a traditional mechanical calibre, which regulates time through the oscillation of a balance wheel, Spring Drive replaces that heartbeat with a glide wheel that turns continuously. Its motion is controlled not by an escapement but by a Tri-Synchro regulator, a system that harmonises mechanical, electrical, and electromagnetic forces.
As the mainspring unwinds, it generates a tiny electrical current, powering a quartz crystal that constantly corrects the glide wheel’s speed. The result is the signature Spring Drive
glide: a seconds hand that moves in an uninterrupted, fluid sweep, that feels more in tune with the natural passage of time.
The SLGA021 is offered in a 40-mm stainless steel case topped with a dual-curved anti-reflective sapphire crystal. Water-resistant to 10 bar and equipped with a magnetic resistance of 4,800 A/m, it is rugged yet visually serene. In drawing once more from the world just outside its doors, Grand Seiko reminds us that precision and poetry can exist in perfect synchrony.
