Masu (measurement)

Masu (Japanese枡Masu ) was in ancient Japan, a measuring container and is now derived therefrom, particularly a square wooden cup for drinking rice wine.

Measuring container

Masu is originally the Japanese name for the square. Liquids and solids such as rice were measured in large and small square wooden vessels called Masu.

1669 unified the shogunate for the whole of Japan, the measurement system and determined the size of the measuring container. A Masu is thus not a unit, but a calibrated vessel that can have many different sizes for verschiedennamige extent, but they are all multiples of 180.4 milliliters.

Although by today's standards a small amount, a Masu rice was then considered enough to feed a working man one day. Similarly, a koku of rice was enough to feed a man a year.

The vessel was symbolically transferred to the area marked by laid out in a grid bar seats in Kabuki and Bunrakutheatern.

Rice wine drinking cup

The masu cup holds exactly one Gō, the smallest measured with Masu quantity, namely 180 milliliters. In Japanese rice wine bars to order in multiples of Go. Who ordered a Go rice wine, which the waiter brings usually an empty masu wooden cup and a large rice wine bottle from which he pours the Masu before the eyes of the guest.

The Masu has traditionally always brimming paid to spill over, so that he is on a saucer that catches the spilling rice wine, and may ausschlürfen the guest after emptying the Masu. In some pubs, it is also customary to make another glass in the Masu. The waiter fills this glass and let it overflow into the Masu until this overflows.

• Ancient weights and measures (Japan)
• Drinking vessel
• Unit volume