Kan to Grams (kan to g)

1 kan equals 3,750 grams exactly.

1 kan = 3,750 grams

How to convert kan to grams

To convert kan to grams, multiply the number of kan by 3,750. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply grams by 0.0002666666667 (rounded).

grams = kan × 3,750

Example: 10 kan = 37,500 grams.

About these units

Kan (kan)

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

1,000 monme, exactly 3.75 kg. A traditional Japanese weight unit.

Long before it was a weight, the kan was a way to carry money: roughly a thousand copper coins strung together through their square holes. In China a bundle of this kind was recognised as a currency unit, and the mass unit came afterward, based on what a thousand such coins weighed.

Japan inherited both ideas. The kan equals 1,000 monme, and Edo-period measures averaged about 3.736 kg, drifting a little above 3.75 kg in the late Edo period. The Weights and Measures Act of 1891 ended the variation by defining the kan as 15/4 kg, exactly 3.75 kg, about 8.27 pounds. That is the figure used here.

The 1891 act made the shaku and the kan the foundation of the national system. Metric became the legal standard in 1924 and the sole one from 1959, leaving the kan as a non-statutory unit whose trade use is penalised, though shaved-ice blocks are still sold as kan-me.

1 kan = 3.75 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement; Japanese Wikipedia: Kan

Gram (g)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a kilogram. The standard unit for food quantities and small objects.

A gram was once defined as a small drop of the natural world. The French National Convention of 1795 set it as the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube one hundredth of a metre on each side, a cubic centimetre. The reference temperature was first the melting point of ice and was later changed to the temperature of maximum density of water, about 4 degrees Celsius. The word came into French as gramme, from Late Latin gramma, itself from the Greek for a letter or small mark; in Late Antiquity it meant about one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

The gram was the base unit of mass in the centimetre-gram-second system, but in 1960 the SI took the kilogram as its base unit, which made the gram one thousandth of it. That is why it appears in so many everyday places: it is the standard for non-liquid ingredients in cooking and shopping, and nutrition labels commonly list contents per 100 g. For a sense of scale, a small paper clip or a pen cap weighs about a gram, and a Japanese 1-yen coin is close to exactly that, while a US penny is around 2.5 g.

1 gram = 0.001 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gram; Wikipedia: Kilogram

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