Tan to Square Yards (tan to yd²)

1 tan equals 1,186.105831 square yards (rounded).

1 tan = 1,186.105831 square yards

How to convert tan to square yards

To convert tan to square yards, multiply the number of tan by 1,186.105831. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply square yards by 0.000843095088.

square yards = tan × 1,186.105831

Example: 10 tan = 11,861.05831 square yards.

About these units

Tan (tan)

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

300 tsubo (about 991.74 m²), about a quarter of an acre. A traditional measure of farmland.

Rice paddies were counted in tan. One tan is 300 tsubo, or exactly 120,000/121 square metres, about 991.7, which is slightly less than a quarter of an acre. It equals ten se, and ten tan make a cho, so a farmer with several tan had a modest holding by the standards of the tax registers.

The unit belongs to the same system that valued land in koku of rice. Under the Tokugawa shogunate the kokudaka assessed a plot by its yield, and surveyed land was recorded in these agricultural areas. A common claim that one tan was the area needed to grow one koku is not confirmed by the sources consulted, so it should be taken as a rough tradition.

Japan signed the Metre Convention in 1885 and the 1891 weights and measures law gave the traditional units fixed metric equivalents. The Measurements Law of 1951 moved the country to metric units from 1959, and the tan survives mainly in rural land transactions and in talk of rice farming.

1 tan = 991.7355372 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement; Wikipedia: Kokudaka; Wikipedia: Koku

Square Yard (yd²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

9 square feet (0.8361 m²). Used for carpet, turf and land in the UK and India (where it is called a gaj).

Branches and rods lie behind this unit. The word yard comes from Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a staff or measuring rod, and it first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, where a yard of land was a tax unit. Where its length came from is uncertain: pacing, the cubit and the arm of King Henry I have all been suggested. A square yard is simply a square of that length on each side.

After the 1959 agreement among six countries fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter, the square yard became exactly 9 square feet, 1,296 square inches or about 0.836 m². It is used across the English-speaking world, notably in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and Pakistan. In northern India it is called a gaj, and in Pakistan a gaz, and house plots there are often quoted in it. In the US and UK the yard, divided into eighths, is also how cloth is bought, so the square yard suits flooring and fabric in the same breath.

1 square yard = 0.83612736 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square yard; Wikipedia: Yard; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Related conversions

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