著者

高田,誠二

出版者

日本計量史学会

雑誌

計量史研究

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, no.1, 1989-12-31

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The Iwakura Embassy Itinerary, published in 1878 and now available as 5 volumes of the Iwanami-Bunko (edited and annotated by A. Tanaka), was originally compiled by Kunitake Kume (1838-1931), who was a member of the Embassy and later became known as a dominant scholar of history of Japan. He took great care in comparative evaluation of the weights and measures of foreign countries which the Embassy visited from 1871 through 1873 and he described them anallytically in the Itinerary together with their numerical relationship to Japanese weights and measures. In this paper discussed are his manner in assessing the weights and measures as well as the possible sources of information he could manage at the time of compilation. Emphasis is laid on the problem of conversion of foreign units of length, area, capacity and weight to Japanese ones which were just at the stage of new consolidation with implicit reference to the Metric System.