koku
Sign in to saveThe is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One gō is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before cooking), used to this day for the plastic measuring cup that is supplied with commercial Japanese rice cookers.
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- conversion to SI unit
- 0.18039
- conversion to standard unit
- 100
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Article
12 sectionsContents
- Chinese equivalent
- Modern unit
- Origin of the modern unit
- Modern measurement enactment
- Lumber koku
- Historic use
- Feudal Japan
- As measure of cargo ship class
- In popular culture
- In fiction
- Explanatory notes
- References
The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One gō is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before cooking), used to this day for the plastic measuring cup that is supplied with commercial Japanese rice cookers.
The koku in Japan was typically used as a dry measure. The amount of rice production measured in koku was the metric by which the magnitude of a feudal domain (han) was evaluated. A feudal lord was only considered daimyō class when his domain amounted to at least 10,000 koku. As a rule of thumb, one koku was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year.