Chō

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

60 ken, about 109.09 m. A traditional measure of distance along roads and the length of a block.

1 chō = 109.0909091 meters (approximately).

About the chō

Cho is written with a character that also means town or block, and the unit appears under the same name for area, which Japanese Wikipedia notes alongside the length meaning. As a length it equals 60 ken, or 360 shaku, putting it between the ken and the ri.

Under the 1891 law it is exactly 1200/11 meter, about 109.09 meters or 358 feet. Because the ken was longer in the 16th century than after the Tokugawa reduction around 1650, a cho measured in an older document may have been several percent longer, so such figures should be treated as approximate.

Thirty-six cho make one ri, so the cho worked as a convenient step for road distances and field layouts. Today it is a historical and place-name unit: the modern metric replacement is simply about 109 meters, roughly one city block.

Sources: Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement; Japanese Wikipedia: Shakkanho (尺貫法); Wikipedia: Ken (unit)

Chō conversion chart

1 chō expressed in every other length unit:

More Japanese units

• sun (length)
• shaku (length)
• ken (length)
• jō (length)
• ri (Japanese) (length)
• monme (weight & mass)
• kin (weight & mass)
• kan (weight & mass)
• gō (volume)
• shō (volume)
• tō (volume)
• koku (volume)
• jō (tatami mat) (area)
• tsubo (area)
• se (area)
• tan (area)

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