Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A liquid and dry measure used in Japan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A unit of measure in feudal Japan, the amount of rice needed to feed one person for a year.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Japanese

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Examples

  • "koku"; this word has never before meant the country as a whole, but only the territory of a clan.

    Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic Sidney Lewis Gulick 1902

  • Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male: 99% female: 99% (2002) GovernmentCountry name: conventional long form: none conventional short form: Japan local long form: Nihon-koku/Nippon-koku local short form: Nihon/Nippon

    Japan 2008

  • Japanconventional long form: none conventional short form: Japan local long form: Nihon-koku/Nippon-koku local short form: Nihon/Nippon

    Country name 2008

  • The egg-yolk-heavy mayo is believed to benefit the koku, or body, and now mayo makers market it as a koku-enhancing seasoning.

    Don't Hold The Mayo! 2007

  • You shall have a hundred koku income, and you shall be a retainer in my service, and you shall be in my bodyguard.

    Home Is the Hunter Dana Kramer-Rolls 2000

  • A hundred koku stipend couldn't be spent by a dead man, and death was all that awaited him at Fushimi Castle.

    Home Is the Hunter Dana Kramer-Rolls 2000

  • He had made Sulu his standard bearer and cheerfully added, with gallows humor, that the post carried a one thousand koku stipend.

    Home Is the Hunter Dana Kramer-Rolls 2000

  • The next day, after an impromptu bath in a cold stream, Sulu was again dressed as befit the station of a hundred koku man in the service of Torii Mototada.

    Home Is the Hunter Dana Kramer-Rolls 2000

  • The name is said to be a corruption of the Telegu _pandi-koku_.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

  • The great _daimyo [u] _ with incomes running into the hundreds of thousands of _koku_ were princes administering part of the public domain, with armies and an elaborate civil service to support.

    The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2)

Comments

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  • Originally, the amount of rice one person would eat during the course of a year in feudal Japan. About 150 kilograms. The amount of rice a person eats in one day was termed a masu.

    February 12, 2010