In preparation to be the official timekeeper of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Suwa Seikosha did something they had never done before: Built Japan's first wristwatch chronograph.

That watch was the Crown Chronograph 45899. A true icon, it carried the hand-wound Crown movement as a column-wheel monopusher, a single pusher at 2 o'clock governing start, stop, and reset, all within an almost implausible 6.1mm thickness. The 5719A calibre beat at 39,600 vph with 38 hours of power reserve, the chronograph running the whole time. As a timing instrument, it had one meaningful limitation: Its sweep seconds hand could only measure up to 60 seconds. Seiko's workaround was a graduated rotating bezel, plastic on the 45899, which proved fragile in practice and left many surviving examples looking considerably worse for wear. The concept, however, was sound.
 
From that single reference, the Crown Chronograph family branched and multiplied in ways that keep us occupied to this day. Dial colours shifted: Black, silver, grey. Bezels evolved. Complications were added and rearranged. The 5717 brought a date window. The 5718 pushed the concept as far as it would go: Two additional pushers on the left flank, a lap counter at 12, a 60-minute register at 6, and a tachymetre scale. And through all of it, the 5719: The final and purest iteration of the 45899, which remains, in our view, the most beautiful of the lot. Clean and uncluttered, wearing a steel bezel with a black aluminium insert over a pure black dial, with no date window breaking the symmetry, and no additional complications crowding the case. Just the monopusher, the bezel, and that dial: Meet the 5719-8980.
 
And then there is the strap choice: rubber, which on paper sounds like an unlikely pairing for a dress chronograph of this pedigree, and yet it works completely. By this reference, the caseback had also evolved, the Olympic torch engraving giving way to Seiko's seahorse.
 
When searching for a particular monopusher reference, you often find examples for sale, but if you really want to be impressed, wait till you see this new old stock one. This whole package comes complete, the straps still bent from being originally shipped to dealers in batches. Miraculous, in every sense of the word.
 
Ships from Tokyo, Japan.