Koku to Liters (koku to L)

1 koku equals 180.3906837 liters (rounded).

1 koku = 180.3906837 liters

How to convert koku to liters

To convert koku to liters, multiply the number of koku by 180.3906837. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply liters by 0.005543523532 (rounded).

liters = koku × 180.3906837

Example: 10 koku = 1,803.906837 liters.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Koku (koku)

JapaneseHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

One hundred shō, about 180.39 L. The amount of rice thought to feed one person for a year; feudal domains were ranked by their koku.

Rice decided rank in Tokugawa Japan, and the koku was the yardstick. A domain whose assessed income reached 10,000 koku could have a daimyo as its lord, and the Kaga domain, rated at about 1.025 million koku, was famous as the million-koku domain. The assessment was a notional yield, with other crops converted to their rice value, and real revenue averaged only around 40 percent of it.

One koku was commonly taken as enough rice to feed one person for a year, though a merchant house code cited in the sources allowed about 1.8 koku per man, so the rule of thumb is loose. The unit equals 10 to, 100 sho or 1,000 go, and it descends from the Chinese dan, which was about 59 litres under the Tang dynasty.

The Meiji law of 1891 fixed the sho from the old kyo-masu measuring box at 2401/1331 litre, which makes the koku about 180.39 litres, close to 5 bushels. Shipping and timber koku were different quantities. A lumber koku is about 278 litres, so the word always needs its context.

1 koku = 180.3906837 liters (approximately).

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

Liter (L)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.

The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.

The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.

The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI

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