Imperial units commonly used units for length are (li), (tseung/cheung), (tsek/chek), (tsun/chun), (fen/fan) in descending scale order. These units are now rarely used in daily life, the imperial and metric systems being preferred. The imperial equivalents are written with the same basic Chinese characters as the Chinese system. In order to distinguish between the units of the two systems, the units can be prefixed with "Ying" () for the Imperial system and "Wa" () for the Chinese system. In writing, derived characters are often used, with an additional (mouth) radical to the left of the original Chinese character, for writing imperial units.
Ministry of the Imperial Household Household Office became the Imperial Household Agency (the current name), and placed under the fold of the newly created , as an external agency attached to it. In 2001, the Imperial Household Agency was organizationally re-positioned under the . The court developed a supporting bureaucracy which was exclusively focused on serving the needs of the Imperial Household . Among the "ritsuryō" officials within this ministry structure were: The deliberate redundancies at the top are features of each position in this remarkably stable hierarchic schema. Many positions would mirror the "-kyō," "-taifu," "-shō," "-jō," and "-sakan" pattern. Ministry of the Imperial