Kawara Japanese Watch Face

WabiFace Kawara brings a tiled Japanese wall — roof tiles, gilt eave ends and a course of white lime plaster — to your Wear OS smartwatch.

🏯 A WALL OF ROOF TILES
Kawara are the fired clay tiles that roof a temple, a castle wall or a storehouse. This face is a round plate cut out of one: two courses of weathered ibushi tiles, smoke-fired to that silver-grey the kilns of Japan are known for, with lichen and moss settled into the joins. Standing proud of the field are six nokimarugawara — the round eave-end tiles that finish a run of roofing — each ringed in gilt that has worn thin and broken through in places. Running between the two courses, from one edge of the plate to the other, is a single band of white lime plaster. Nothing has been cleaned up. The moss, the water streaks and the chipped gilding are the reason the wall looks its age, and they are kept.

⌚ SIX EAVE ENDS
Each of the six eave ends holds a complication, and every one of them is ring-capable: give an eave end a data source that reports a goal and it draws a progress ring inside the gilt rim, around the value. Battery does this out of the box; assign a step goal or an exercise ring and those fill too. The six tiles were not set to the same size, so the slot is cut from the smallest of them — the same ring in all six, sized so that nothing can overflow the tightest window.

🕐 THE TIME
The plaster course crosses the entire plate and carries no ornament at all, so the hour and minute sit on it with nothing behind them to read through. That empty course is the reason this wall became a digital face.

📅 THE CALENDAR
The course runs to both edges, so the calendar sits beside the time rather than above it: month over day at one end, weekday over seconds at the other, mirrored left and right. The two readings a glance actually wants — the date and the seconds — are the ones set large. The calendar and the seconds can each be turned off.

🎨 FOUR FIRINGS
Ibushi (smoked silver), Aka (Ryukyu red), Ryokuyu (green glaze) and Kuro (black glaze) — four ways a Japanese kiln actually finishes a roof. Only the tiles change: the lime plaster and the six gilt rims are the same pixels in every one, the way a real wall keeps its plaster and its gilding whatever colour came out of the kiln.

🖌 THREE INLAYS, EACH A PAIR
Sumi and Gold, Indigo and Silver, Bengara and Gofun. This plate has two grounds, not one — white plaster and dark tile — and no single colour is legible on both, so each inlay is a pair: the dark half is written on the plaster and the light half inside the eave ends. It is still one choice, so the time, the calendar, the seconds, the complication values and every goal ring move together, the way a single hand would have laid them. In always-on the reading switches to the light half of the pair so it stays legible on black.

🌙 AMBIENT MODE
The wall falls away and the six eave ends stay as thin lit rings, with a ring at the edge of the plate, the two lines of the plaster course, and the hour redrawn between them — so the arrangement is still recognisable at a glance while the display is dimmed.

🎴 DETAILS
- A tiled wall kept at full resolution, moss, water streaks and all
- Six gilt eave ends, each a complication that can carry a goal ring
- A course of white lime plaster running the full width of the dial
- Gilding worn thin and chipped through, kept rather than repainted

🎴 MORE FROM WABIFACE
Kyoto, our free Japanese watch face: https://play.viewpro.live/store/apps/details?id=jp.wabiface.kyoto

🌸 ABOUT WABIFACE
WabiFace is a collection of watch faces celebrating Japanese aesthetics — wabi-sabi, mono no aware, and the dignified passage of time.

Requires Wear OS 5 or later. Compatible with Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch, and other Wear OS 5+ smartwatches.

Artwork created with AI assistance and reviewed by the developer.

Please check your watch OS version before purchasing.

For support: support@wabiface.jp
Website: https://wabiface.jp