land productivity and military service

I know that a "cho" is about 8 hectares, and I know what a "koku"
represents. Does anyone know how many "koku" could be squeezed out of
a typical "cho" of typical farmland? How many farms would fit on
a "cho"?

I ask all of these because I want to have a nice rough way to
guesstimate how many troops a domain of size X can reasonably field,
and comparing productivity with some of the military assessments from
the Iriki seems a good place to start.

Is there a good place to look up how many cho were in a typical
daimyo's possession?

How big of an army would someone like the Mori of 1550 have?

"I know that a "cho" is about 8 hectares, and I know what a "koku"
represents. Does anyone know how many "koku" could be squeezed out of
a typical "cho" of typical farmland? How many farms would fit on
a "cho"?"
A cho would normally yield about 30 koku under normal circumstances.
As to how many farms would fit on a cho...it depends on the size of
the individual farms (a cho is about 100 meters square).

"How many farms would fit on a "cho"?"
OK, according to my father-in-law (a retired rice farmer), during the
Edo period about 3 average sized farms would make up a cho of land.

Thank you very much for your help!

--- In samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com, "kurotatsunoshi"
wrote:

>
> "How many farms would fit on a "cho"?"
> OK, according to my father-in-law (a retired rice farmer), during the
> Edo period about 3 average sized farms would make up a cho of land.

HI

if you havent already seen these video clips then I
would suggest you have a look at them.

There are a couple of interesting videos of bullets
being shot (deliberately!) into the blade of a Katana
sword. The 1911's round is split cleanly by the blade:

http://mail.cu.ac.kr/~cave10/NihotoVSpistol.wmv

The .50 machine-gun (fired full-auto) is pretty
amazing... six of its rounds are split or shattered by
the sword blade before the seventh round breaks the
sword!

http://data.millim.com/mybbs/mbbs00200/20041119/mgun.wmv


Paul


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Perk your chest against all devastating swords and fiercing arrows, if you wish to survive in the battle.

(Takeda Shingen)

That seems to be just like a natural paradox at first glance. How can u flee those by perking yourself against them?

But later you realized that more than every other essence or super natural concept, that is a brave solution to grab a chance to face a great warlord instead a common soldier.

Think of it men.







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--- soroush vahabi <s_whitefalcons@...> wrote:

> Perk your chest against all devastating swords and
> fiercing arrows, if you wish to survive in the
> battle.
>
>
> (Takeda Shingen)
>
> That seems to be just like a natural paradox at
> first glance. How can u flee those by perking
> yourself against them?
>
> But later you realized that more than every other
> essence or super natural concept, that is a brave
> solution to grab a chance to face a great warlord
> instead a common soldier.
>
> Think of it men.

And this has exactly WHAT to do with land productivity
and military service?

If you want to post a nice pep-talk from Takeda
Shingen, then fine--but change the subject heading and
start a new thread.




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Very very interesting!!

Thanks Paul!


Helly Angel

Richardson Paul <umaryu@...> wrote:
HI

if you havent already seen these video clips then I
would suggest you have a look at them.

There are a couple of interesting videos of bullets
being shot (deliberately!) into the blade of a Katana
sword. The 1911's round is split cleanly by the blade:

http://mail.cu.ac.kr/~cave10/NihotoVSpistol.wmv

The .50 machine-gun (fired full-auto) is pretty
amazing... six of its rounds are split or shattered by
the sword blade before the seventh round breaks the
sword!

http://data.millim.com/mybbs/mbbs00200/20041119/mgun.wmv


Paul


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Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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Hi Andrew,

In message <crf0nr+rec2@...>, Andrew Benton
<spearweasel@...> writes

>
> I know that a "cho" is about 8 hectares

A "chou" is as a unit of length is 36 jou, that is: 36 x 3.03 metres (10
shaku) which equals 109.08 metres. Assuming that the unit of land area
is derived by squaring this we get: 11898.446 metres, or call it 1.19
hectares, not eight. A hectare being a lump of turf measuring 100 x 100
metres. And for those of us who don't know their hectares from their
Hectors, the above translates to a smidgen under 3 acres, okay for the
pedants amongst us 2.975 (a hectare being 2.5 acres) :-)

As a guide, traditional rice production generates between 1 to 5 tonnes
of rice per hectare per annum, depending upon the quality of the land
and upon how many growing seasons per year you can get, which varies
between one and three. A koku, is 180 litres of rice, which is about 135
kg (ish) in the sack. Which means that roughly 1 cho of land should
produce somewhere between 8.8 and 44 koku per year, which is more or
less the same figure of 30 koku that some one else suggested.

And the idea of three functioning farms per chou makes my brain go
sproing!


Yours

Dean

http://www.thefightschool.demon.co.uk

Oyakata holds session:

My email was apparently bouncing, so I haven't seen the start of
this discussion.

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 16:04:42 +0000, Dean Waylandさん wrote:
>In message <crf0nr+rec2@...>, Andrew Benton
><spearweasel@...> writes
>> I know that a "cho" is about 8 hectares
>
>A "chou" is as a unit of length is 36 jou, that is: 36 x 3.03 metres (10

This can be confusing. There is a chou that is a unit of length that
is roughly 109 meters. But there is another chou which is a unit of
areas. They both can be written with the kanji 町, although it's
usually more common to see the unit of length written as 丁.

>shaku) which equals 109.08 metres. Assuming that the unit of land area
>is derived by squaring this we get: 11898.446 metres, or call it 1.19
>hectares, not eight. A hectare being a lump of turf measuring 100 x 100

As with all measures in Japan, much depends on the era and the
locality that is under discussion. But in modern terms, one chou is
9917.4 square meters, or 991 'ares', just slightly under 1 hectare.

Again the precise system and modern equivalent depends greatly on
the era of Japanese history that is under discussion. but in general
the pattern is:

Basic unit of area is one 'bu' 歩 = 3.3 square meters. Note that this
is roughly the same as the modern unit "tsubo" 坪
30 'bu' = one 'se' 畝 = 99 square meters
10 'se' = 1 'tan' (反 or sometimes 段)
10 'tan' = 1 chou (町)

This means that one 'se' 畝 is roughly equal to one modern are,
which is 10,000 square meters, and one 'chou' 町 is essentially one
hectare.

--
Jay Kelly
oyakata@...

Hey group

I've just watched the movie, 'when the last sword is drawn'. It featured a
left handed samurai who wore his swords on the right. Are there any famous
historical figures who done this? I have never seen anyone in kendo or Iai
practice left handed, so I was just wondering?

Paul

--- Paul Martin <pmartin6@...> wrote:

>
> Hey group
>
> I've just watched the movie, 'when the last sword is
> drawn'. It featured a
> left handed samurai who wore his swords on the
> right. Are there any famous
> historical figures who done this? I have never seen
> anyone in kendo or Iai
> practice left handed, so I was just wondering?

I can't speak for sure, but Japanese usually taught
their left-handed children to "become" right-handed.
Not just in swordsmanship, but in all things,
left-handedness was looked at as a deformity,
almost--even today, it's considered extremely strange.
The character in the movie you mention is almost
certainly a movie construct--the reason today you
don't see kendoka learning left-handed is that all
styles taught left-handedness out of their pupils.



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Last year my kyudo sensei reported some problems with aspiring kyudoka in
Europe. Some were asking why they couldn't learn left handed. For kyudo it
is impossible for a number of reasons. First the viewing area is invariably
on the right in the dojo. Second, in battle formation, archers firing from
any side etc. would cause confusion in the ranks. Third, (and most
importantly), the yumi is curved in such a way that it cannot be fired
properly from a left-handed stance.
In addition, the grip of the yumi is one of the more difficult aspects of
kyudo for the beginner to master. Being left-handed is actually a bonus in a
right-handed stance.

M.J.Peters

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I have only once seen a left-handed iaidoka. He had lost his right hand, and so started training left-handed, but that is the only time I've seen it. I once attended an aikido seminar at a club that allowed their left handed students to hold a bokken left handed-i.e.:left hand nearest the blade. What a lot of trouble that caused during bokken tori practice, since everyone else had trained for right-handed swordsmen!

Paul Martin <pmartin6@...> wrote:
Hey group

I've just watched the movie, 'when the last sword is drawn'. It featured a
left handed samurai who wore his swords on the right. Are there any famous
historical figures who done this? I have never seen anyone in kendo or Iai
practice left handed, so I was just wondering?

Paul







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--- In samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Martin"
wrote:

>
> Hey group
>
> I've just watched the movie, 'when the last sword is drawn'. It

featured a

> left handed samurai who wore his swords on the right. Are there any

famous

> historical figures who done this? I have never seen anyone in kendo

or Iai

> practice left handed, so I was just wondering?
>
> Paul

Almost 99.99% of swordsman were right handed. Since Japan belived in
some form of conformity at the time, left handedness was not well
recived and often left handed people were forced to be right handed.
Also they way samurai walked on roads forced them to be right handed,
since the sword was on the left side, they often walked on the left
side of the road, as not to bang their sword on someone.

There is no disadvantage for being left handed and using a sword with
the right, aside from a minor discomfort at first, you grow out of
it. In some sword styles the left hand controlled the power of the
sword, the right controlled direction.

As for left handed styles, I do not know completely, maybe it was a
story arch to make the character look odd compared to the rest of
society. There are some styles of iaido though that teach left handed
draws, the saya still on the left side though. Such a draw can be
seen at the end of Sanjuro.

Maikeru