Square Meters to Tsubo (m² to tsubo)

1 square meter equals 0.3025 tsubo exactly.

1 square meter = 0.3025 tsubo

How to convert square meters to tsubo

To convert square meters to tsubo, multiply the number of square meters by 0.3025. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply tsubo by 3.305785124 (rounded).

tsubo = square meters × 0.3025

Example: 10 square meters = 3.025 tsubo.

About these units

Square Meter (m²)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of area: a square one meter on each side. Used for floor areas and property sizes in most of the world.

Squaring the meter was built into the metric system from the start. The French law of 18 Germinal, Year III (7 April 1795) defined the are, the land unit that gave the hectare its name, as exactly 100 square meters, so the square meter was already the foundation of metric land measure. Nobody is credited with inventing it as a separate unit. It is simply the area of a square one meter on each side, and any SI prefix that works for the meter works for it, with the prefix squared along with the unit.

That squaring catches people out: a square kilometer is one million square meters, not one thousand. Since 1983 the meter has been defined through the speed of light, so the square meter is tied to a constant of nature as well as to the second. A hectare, about the area of Trafalgar Square in London, is 10,000 square meters. In everyday terms one square meter is about 10.76 square feet. Unicode has a compatibility character for it, but the recommended way to write it is the plain superscript two: m².

The square meter is the reference unit for area on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Square metre; Wikipedia: Are (unit); NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition

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)

Related conversions

See all area units.