Unit of Length mentioned in Wei Chi concerning Japanese people : Part 2 Value of Chinese Mileage in Chinese Mainland (1)

In this number, I positioned the value of Chinese mileage, which is found in "Gishiwajinden" (Story of the Japanese in the Book of Late Han Dynasty and History of Wei Dynasty), among the values of total Chinese mileages mentioned in "Sangokushi" (San-kuo Chih or Memoir of the Three Kingdoms) on the basis of the following three prerequisites on the premise of determining the character of historical records thereof, and I took the general view of the relation between the above and the accounts containing the value of Chinese mileage found in the historical materials in the previous and later ages : (1) The test of "Sangokushi" shall be the object of investigation, (2) The interior of the Chinese Mainland shall be the geographical arena for investigation, and (3) The methodical stand where examples in which distance between 2 places was mentioned on the basis of the definite or quasi-definite values of Chinese mileage are made the standard for comparison shall be clarified. After than, I first analyzed all examples of use in accordance with the above-mentioned 3 prerequisites. In this analysis I determined the places with greatest care by comparing them with their names on the basis of geographical records, archaeological reports, etc. in each era of China. As for 8 examples out of 11 ones which could be ascertained, I measured actually the distance between 2 fixed spots by using a curvimeter on a map drawn on a scale of 1 to 500,000,east and west, and calculated distance of unit Chinese mileage in each measurement. As for the value of Chinese mileage found in "Shokushiryushoden" (Story of Shu Liu Chang), which has the most stable distance between 2 fixed spots, I compared it with the value of Chinese mileage between the same 2 spots based on the geographical and historical records in later age and made historical research. From the results of this research, I suggested possibility of this value of mileage being based on the mileage unit of the old measurement system in Chou era which has a long length of 19 cm or thereabouts.