Square Feet to Tsubo (ft² to tsubo)

1 square foot equals 0.0281031696 tsubo exactly.

1 square foot = 0.0281031696 tsubo

How to convert square feet to tsubo

To convert square feet to tsubo, multiply the number of square feet by 0.0281031696. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply tsubo by 35.58317493 (rounded).

tsubo = square feet × 0.0281031696

Example: 10 square feet = 0.281031696 tsubo.

About these units

Square Foot (ft²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.09290304 m². The standard unit for floor areas and real estate in the US, UK and India.

Feet came first, and they were not all the same length. As a body-based unit, the foot ranged historically between about 250 and 335 millimeters, with ancient Greek and Roman feet near 300 mm. In medieval England a statute foot was set at 10/11 of an older Belgic foot, and Charlemagne's attempt around 790 to standardize units largely failed. The square foot is simply that length squared, so its size changed along with the foot.

The 1959 international agreement fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 meter, so one square foot is exactly 0.09290304 m², or 144 square inches. The United Kingdom adopted the new foot in 1964. Today the square foot is the usual way of listing property in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Hong Kong, although the measuring convention varies: agents may measure corner to corner, subtract unheated space, or add heated space that extends beyond the end-to-end measurement. The world's smallest park has been reported at 2.6 sq ft.

1 square foot = 0.09290304 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square foot; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Tsubo (tsubo)

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 400/121 m² (3.3058 m²), one square ken: about two tatami mats. Still the usual unit for land and property prices in Japan.

Walk into a Japanese estate agent's window and the land is still priced per tsubo. The unit is the area of a square ken, which is six shaku on a side, so 36 square shaku. Once the shaku was fixed at 10/33 metre, the tsubo followed as exactly 400/121 square metres, about 3.306.

Builders think of it as two tatami mats, since a mat is half a tsubo, and some sources also count it as 10 go. In farming contexts the same area is sometimes called a bu. A tsubo is a very small plot, so larger land is quoted in multiples such as the se, tan and cho.

The unit travelled with Japanese rule. Korea's pyeong and Taiwan's ping are the same 3.3058 square metres. South Korea formally banned the pyeong in 1961 and made commercial use an offence in 2007, yet it persists informally, much as Japan kept the tsubo after metric units became the legal standard.

1 tsubo = 3.305785124 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Tsubo; Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement; Wikipedia: Shaku (unit)

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