Note to self

[gurdymonkey]

1 Koku = enough rice to feed a person for a year.
1 Masu = enough rice to feed a person for a day.
If 1 koku = 330.69 pounds (150 kg), 1 masu = 0.906 pound.

Hmmmm.

Comments

[aureellia.livejournal.com]

I pondered.

If raw Japanese style white rice is 105 calories per ounce uncooked, this figure supports political information from the time that is available to the average d00fus like me. That would be 14.496 or 1,522.08 calories per day just in rice. It avoids the need for substantial edible oils in the diet to round out the caloric intake of the average person. The protein wouldn't be bad either.

Was white rice available to most social classes?

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

White vs. brown rice would depend on time and place. White rice keeps longer because it doesn't have the bran and some of the oils in it, OTOH, you add expense and lose some nutrition in the processing. Poorer people also ate a lot of millet; I'd guess that everyone did if the rice crop wasn't good. Overall, nine-tenths of a pound of rice with some added daikon for calcium and vitamin C and some tofu or other soy products to give complete protein would be a fairly adequate basic diet.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

I need to look for further details, but millet, barley, wheat and buckwheat were staple grains in Japan as well. If you remember "Seven Samurai," the peasants were saving their rice for the samurai and eating millet.

http://tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=food&thread=2459&page=1
Millet turns out to be darned filling as well.

Just found this: http://www.cambridge.org/us/Books/kiple/rice.htm

[cayswann.livejournal.com]

Oooo! The Cambridge article is facinating!

[erink.livejournal.com]

I remember talking about this on SCA-JML and I was thinking that there must have been substantial foraging going on as well as some hunting and fishing. If you're a soldier "on campaign" then you're probably spending lots of time in the woods, and bringing home wild plants to eat is not unheard of even now.

[sengokudaimyo.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but that's also .9 pounds of *raw* rice.

They generally assume you will be supplementing with pickles and other veggies. ;)

Me, being mysterious....

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Yes. Watch this journal for further developments. ;-D