Chō to Kilometers (chō to km)

1 chō equals 0.1090909091 kilometers (rounded).

1 chō = 0.1090909091 kilometers

How to convert chō to kilometers

To convert chō to kilometers, multiply the number of chō by 0.1090909091. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 9.166666667 (rounded).

kilometers = chō × 0.1090909091

Example: 10 chō = 1.090909091 kilometers.

About these units

Chō (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.

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.

1 chō = 109.0909091 meters (approximately).

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

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

Related conversions

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