Nowadays, truly high-end Japanese luxury timepieces are more visible and popular in the global luxury watch market than ever before. Increased marketplace visibility, a more informed and enthusiastic buying public, and greater retail availability outside of Japan have all led to a boom for the luxury wings of major Japanese manufacturers, but even among this new wave of popularity Citizen’s premium offerings remain relatively under the radar. As the brand celebrates a full century of Citizen-branded watches, though, the Japanese giant’s premium wing has delivered perhaps its most compelling presentation yet. Featuring a subtle, organic dial, razor-sharp Super Titanium case design, and high-end implementations of the brand’s core technologies, the limited-edition Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L is a refined, understated, and exquisitely presented case for the The Citizen series as a whole.

At 38.3mm wide, the Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L’s Super Titanium alloy case is light, handsomely balanced, and dressily compact on the wrist. The overall form is crisp, angular, and deceptively simple, dominated by sharp faceted lugs featuring wide, finely polished chamfers. Outside of the unique angular form of the lugs, the rest of the case is classic Japanese dress watch design, with a wide, sloping polished bezel, tightly packaged brushed case sides, and a handsomely detailed pillbox crown at 3 o’clock topped with the The Citizen eagle logo. At 2 o’clock, there’s a discreet recessed pusher for the hidden perpetual calendar complication, but the disruption to the lines of the case isn’t particularly egregious. The AQ4100-65L isn’t a slender watch on paper at 12.2mm thick, but this case depth is smartly proportioned and well-distributed to keep the on-wrist feel relatively thin. For example, Citizen de-emphasizes the main case body in profile, dividing up much of the case height between the sloping bezel and the caseback. When combined with the gently arcing wraparound effect of the lugs and mid-case, this effectively masks much of the case’s mass during wear. The Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L’s solid caseback is surprisingly simple for this price point, featuring a relatively straightforward rendition of the line’s eagle emblem in shallow relief. Despite the dressy connotations here, Citizen rates this watch for a versatile, dependable 100 meters of water resistance.

In true Japanese luxury fashion, the Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L’s dial doesn’t boldly announce its presence but instead whispers its refinement in a much more subdued manner. At first glance, the main dial surface appears light, organic, and almost cloudy, and that effect is no accident. Beneath the clear sapphire upper dial surface, the bulk of what’s visible here is hand-dyed washi paper, a traditional, fibrous material used in Japanese handicrafts for centuries. To give this paper its random, striated application of desaturated navy blue, the material is hand-dyed using an ancient technique known as pole-wrap shibori. Essentially, the paper itself is coiled around a wooden pole coated in indigo dye, and then pushed up the length of the pole by hand. As the paper naturally wrinkles and stretches during this process, some areas receive more dye than others, leading to the soft, dreamlike blend of blues, grays, and whites on display here. Up close, this effect becomes even more enticing. With a texture that calls to mind a raw silkworm cocoon, the paper surface contains a multitude of pores and raised fibers, which allows for soft, ethereal light play across the surface. Although this porous texture carries its own sense of visual flair, this loose, fibrous texture also has another benefit — it allows light to pass through. This way, Citizen can equip this with its signature Eco-Drive light-powered movement system without resorting to a more conspicuous solar panel segment. With such a unique base dial surface, how does Citizen approach the rest of the space under the sapphire crystal? In short, conservatively. Each piece of dial hardware here isn’t exactly groundbreaking but points back to traditional Japanese luxury themes of sharpness and subtlety. The applied baton indices are deftly faceted to catch light from virtually any angle, while the brand flexes its finishing muscle with the mix of brushing and mirror-polished chamfers on the dauphine hands. Most impressively, the 3 o’clock date window is topped with a near-microscopic grooved finish, giving this element a bit more visual depth than simple polishing could achieve. Lastly, the gold needle seconds hand adds a carefully considered dose of contrasting warmth to the blue backdrop.

During most situations, this dial seems like a simple, dressy three-hand design, but Citizen keeps an ace up its sleeve here. The Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L is, in fact, a perpetual calendar, and once the 2 o’clock corrector is pressed, the seconds hand jumps to display both the current month and the current year in the leap year cycle. As an example, each five-minute interval on the outer scale is used to represent a particular month — 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock stands in for January, 1 o’clock to 2 o’clock represents February, and so on, while the exact position of the seconds hand in this sector would show the number of years since the last leap year. Since it’s July 2024 at press time, the seconds hand would point to the 35-second mark to indicate that it is the seventh month and that it’s currently a leap year. July 2025 would move this to the 36-second mark, indicating that it’s one year past the leap year in the cycle. It’s an interesting party trick, but being both figuratively buried in the watch’s manual and literally buried into the 2 o’clock case side, it’s one that owners will likely almost never use (if they’re aware of it at all).

Citizen powers the The Citizen AQ4100-65L with the manufacture CAL.A060 Eco-Drive light-powered quartz perpetual calendar movement. The stigma that has historically surrounded quartz movements at this elevated price point has largely dissipated among enthusiasts these days, and viewed on the merits the CAL.A060 has quite a lot to offer. Besides the aforementioned perpetual calendar (which Citizen states will not need adjusting until the year 2100), this is a true high-accuracy quartz. Citizen claims this movement runs within +5/-5 seconds per year, and it features a handful of other high-tech additions including a movement lock function that prevents additional damage to the movement after it senses a heavy impact. Factor in an 18-month power reserve on a full solar charge, and the CAL.A060 is a genuine contender against the more exotic quartz offerings of its Japanese rivals.

To complete the design, the Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L comes equipped with a five-link bracelet in case-matching Super Titanium. Compared to the faceted, angular case design, this bracelet feels significantly simpler and more orthodox, visually reading as a straightforward brushed oyster-style design with embellished extra mid-links. While it may lack drama and its rounded links clash slightly with the more planar case, it’s an undoubtedly comfortable bracelet on the wrist, with finely detailed brushing that further emphasizes Citizen’s expertise in titanium finishing.

The past few years have been an excellent time for Japanese luxury timepieces, with greater global availability and enthusiast awareness for these pieces than ever before. While some of its rivals have made leaps and bounds in this space, Citizen’s The Citizen collection remains something of an insider secret, but the limited-edition Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L beautifully proves that the brand’s luxury wing is overdue for mainstream popularity. Only 600 models will be made in the Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L’s production run, and the watch is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this watch stands at $4,425 USD as of press time. To learn more, please visit the Citizen website.