Kan to Kilograms (kan to kg)

1 kan equals 3.75 kilograms exactly.

1 kan = 3.75 kilograms

How to convert kan to kilograms

To convert kan to kilograms, multiply the number of kan by 3.75. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilograms by 0.2666666667 (rounded).

kilograms = kan × 3.75

Example: 10 kan = 37.5 kilograms.

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

Kilogram (kg)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of mass. Since 2019 it is defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant, replacing the old platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris.

Oddly for a base unit, the kilogram began life as a derived one. In 1793 revolutionary France defined the grave as the mass of one litre of water, and a decree of 1795 then replaced it with the kilogramme, a name built from the Greek khilioi (a thousand) and gramma, a Late Latin word for a small weight. In 1799 a platinum cylinder, the Kilogramme des Archives, became the physical standard, matching a cubic decimetre of water at its densest, around 4 degrees Celsius. In 1889 the metric community adopted a platinum-iridium cylinder made in 1879, the International Prototype of the Kilogram, nicknamed Le Grand K.

The kilogram is still the only SI base unit with a prefix in its name. Because SI forbids stacked prefixes, a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram rather than a microkilogram, so every mass prefix is attached to the gram. Calibrating every national standard against one object in a vault near Paris meant that all of them drifted relative to it, so in November 2018 member states voted to tie the kilogram to a fixed value of the Planck constant. The change took effect on 20 May 2019. Day to day nothing shifted, but the definition no longer depends on a single piece of metal.

The kilogram is the reference unit for weight & mass on this site.

Sources: NIST: Kilogram introduction (SI redefinition); Wikipedia: Kilogram

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