LIGHT OF YOUR LIFE
It was reassuring for me that the first person I saw wearing Bulgari’s aluminium-cased wristwatch — some 20-plus years ago — was, indeed, a rake. Put it another way: if a Japanese audio genius who could get away with sporting embroidered Nehru jackets, hand-printed silks and a man bun into his seventies isn’t a rake, then I need to be given a new definition. Yet there was the legendary Ken Ishiwata sporting a first-generation aluminium-cased Bulgari watch at a time when the horological hordes were stampeding towards Panerai.
As a watch casualty obsessed with mechanical movements and steel cases, I was fascinated to learn what stimuli would lead my mentor — the man who taught me not just about sound but about sake vintages, Nikon rangefinders, and maki-e lacquered pens — to acquire a
