Journe marks the tenth anniversary of each of his boutiques with a watch, individually numbered and carrying the name of the city. This is the Tokyo edition of the Centigraphe, made in a run of ten, with a polished titanium case at 40 mm and a dial in ruthenium over gold. Titanium is not a metal the house uses for dress watches, and the anniversary series is the one place it appears, running back through a Chronometre Souverain in 2005, a Resonance in 2006 and a Tourbillon in 2007. The Centigraphe joined that sequence later. Ten pieces is the entire population.
The case is polished titanium at 40 mm, which is a strange material to polish and the reason the anniversary watches look different from anything else in the collection. Titanium takes a shine differently from gold, holding a grayer and harder light, and the effect is closer to steel than to a precious metal. The dial is ruthenium laid over gold, a finish Journe has used on a handful of limited series and almost nowhere else, and it shifts between gray, brown and blue as the light moves. The three chronograph counters are cut in sapphire rather than in metal, so they read as openings into the movement rather than as applied discs. Central hours and minutes run above them. The rocker sits in the caseband at two o'clock as it does on every Centigraphe. Sapphire counters are the detail that separates the anniversary dials from everything else. On the standard watches the three registers are metal, guilloche worked and screwed down; here they are cut through, so the eye passes into the movement rather than stopping at a surface. Against a ruthenium plate that produces a depth the metal versions cannot manage. The hands are finished light to hold against the dark ground, and the printing on the scales stays red and black as it does across the model. Nothing else about the exterior was changed for the edition.
The mechanism is the standard Centigraphe and the anniversary treatment changes nothing about it. Three counters divide the measurement: a hundredth of a second, twenty seconds and ten minutes, each on its own train drawn from the center of the mainspring rather than from the going train. The hundredth hand turns once a second and can be stopped anywhere along that path, which is what allows a reading finer than the movement's own rate would suggest. The chronograph is isolated from the timekeeping, so it can be left running indefinitely without affecting anything. Starting, stopping and zeroing are all done through the rocker rather than through two pushers. Everything else about the watch is a time-only dress chronograph, wound by hand and set from the crown. Ruthenium itself is worth a note, since it is the reason the anniversary watches look the way they do. It is applied as a coating over a finished gold surface rather than as a paint, so whatever work has been done underneath remains visible through it, and it changes tone with the angle instead of holding one color. Journe used it on a limited series of Octa watches in the early 2000s and then set it aside, which makes its reappearance on the anniversary pieces a deliberate reference rather than a coincidence. It is also difficult to apply evenly, which is part of why it has never been a catalogue finish.
The anniversary series is the least documented part of the catalogue. Each boutique receives its own edition when it reaches ten years, the watches are numbered and named for the city, and the runs are small enough that most collectors will never see one. Tokyo was the first F.P. Journe boutique, which gives its editions a seniority the others do not have. The titanium and ruthenium combination has become the signature of the whole series rather than of any single watch in it, and pieces from different cities are followed together as a group. None of them were sold outside the boutique they were made for, which means provenance is unusually easy to establish and unusually important. The titanium anniversary line also predates the LineSport by a decade, which is worth knowing because it is easy to assume that titanium in this collection means sports watch. It does not. These are dress watches in a metal chosen for its association with the anniversary rather than for weight, polished rather than left matte, and built in the standard 40 mm case. That distinction has been lost in most descriptions of the series, and it matters when comparing an anniversary piece to anything from the sports line, since the two share a material and almost nothing else about their intention.
Ten pieces is a small enough number that this watch is bought as an object with a history rather than as a configuration. Anyone who wants a Centigraphe to wear should buy a gold or platinum one; anyone who wants this specific watch already knows why. The titanium case is lighter than any other Centigraphe and reads as considerably more modern, and the ruthenium dial is the detail that will decide it for most people, since it photographs badly and looks like nothing else in person. As a limited anniversary piece the questions are numbering, papers and provenance rather than condition. The original boutique documentation is what establishes which of the ten an example is. Anything offered without that paperwork should be treated carefully, since a titanium Centigraphe with a ruthenium dial and no numbering is difficult to place within the series and impossible to place within a particular city. The case back carries the numbering, which is the first thing to look at on any example that comes up, ahead of the dial and ahead of the case.
