Kurono Tokyo

Hajime Asaoka is a Tokyo-based independent watchmaker whose personal-brand pieces (Project T tourbillons, Pocket Watch Chronographs) sell for between USD 150,000 and USD 400,000 and are produced in single-digit quantities. Asaoka's own output is too limited and too expensive to reach most collectors, so in 2019 he launched a second brand, Kurono Tokyo, targeting a radically different price tier and customer.

Kurono Tokyo's proposition is simple and extreme: Asaoka designs the watch (dial, case, hands) personally; the watch is cased and assembled in Japan to the same visual standards Asaoka applies to his high-end pieces; but the movement is a Miyota 90S5 (a Swiss-Made Sellita-equivalent) rather than an in-house calibre. The resulting wristwatch retails at approximately USD 3,000, two orders of magnitude less than Asaoka's own-brand pieces, while visually delivering hand-polished applied indices, mirror-finished heat-blued hands, Japanese enamel dials on select references, and an overall finishing standard usually seen at 5-10x the price.

Sales happen through online lotteries on the Kurono Tokyo website. Each release is a small batch (typically 150-300 pieces per colourway, total launches of 500-1,000 pieces) announced with a few days' notice and open for entries for 48-72 hours. Every release since launch has been oversubscribed by 10x to 50x, meaning the vast majority of interested buyers never get allocated. Successful lottery winners pay retail directly; secondary-market premiums of 2x to 5x retail are routine within days of shipping.

The first reference was the Chronograph 1 (2019), followed by the three-hand Classic collection (2020 onward) in a rotating sequence of dial colourways: Mokume (wood-grain silver), Toki (a deep dusk blue), Kogetsu (sunburst), Asagi (pale mint), Karakuri, and others. In 2023 Kurono added the Bunkyō Tourbillon (limited to 50 pieces at USD 50,000), a direct bridge between Asaoka's high-end output and the Kurono model. By 2024 the brand had shipped approximately 5,000 watches globally, with no retail presence and an entirely online distribution model.