From 1632 until 1854, Japan's rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns' city. Spanning the centuries, this "meditative exploration of time and change" (Wall Street Journal) contains the individual voices of a Tokugawa shogun, a woman remembering the firebombs of World War II, and a scientist who created the world's most accurate clock.