Koku

For the unit of time written koku 刻, see Traditional Chinese timekeeping. For the shakuhachi song, see Kokū. For the fictional giant, see Tom Swift.

The koku (斛) is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 to (斗) or approximately 180 litres (40 imp gal; 48 US gal),[a][1] or about 150 kilograms (330 lb) of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō.[2] One gō is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before cooking), used to this day for the plastic measuring cup that is supplied with commercial Japanese rice cookers.[3]

The koku in Japan was typically used as a dry measure. The amount of rice production measured in koku was the metric by which the magnitude of a feudal domain (han) was evaluated.[4] A feudal lord was only considered daimyō class when his domain amounted to at least 10,000 koku.[4] As a rule of thumb, one koku was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year.[5][b][c]

The Chinese equivalent or cognate unit for capacity is the shi or dan (Chinese: 石; pinyin: shí, dàn; Wade–Giles: shih, tan) also known as hu (斛; hú; hu), now approximately 103 litres but historically about 59.44 litres (13.07 imp gal; 15.70 US gal).


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