Are There Horses In Japan? (Find Out!)

I’ve recently been getting interested in all things Japanese.

I think the history and culture is fascinating, and it’s such a beautiful country.

One thing I was quite surprised by, though, was that horses are reasonably rare in Japan.

They’d played such an important role in the history and indeed the religions of the country that I couldn’t quite believe this, so I decided to look a bit further into it.

So, are there horses in Japan?

There are no strictly ‘native’ Japanese horses—at least in the sense of any that initially evolved there. Despite the popularity of horse racing and the importance of horses in Shintoism, horses are relatively rare in Japan, and very uncommon to find in the wild.

So, there certainly are horses in Japan, although a lot less than you might expect.

Nowadays, there are many domestic horses used in racing and other activities, but there are not many compared with other countries.

Given that Japan is an island and has been for tens of millions of years, any horses there were at some point or another brought over from somewhere else by humans.

Let’s look further into this.

Are horses native to Japan?

The answer to that really depends on how far back you want to go.

Our oldest records point to horses being present in Japan from at least the 6^th century AD.

They were almost certainly there much sooner, since horses were first domesticated around 3500 BC.

So, early humans had plenty of time to get horses over to Japan.

So, in that sense, if you look back far enough, any and all breeds of horse in Japan were ultimately brought there by humans.

Horses originally evolved in North America, and somehow made their way over to Russia, where they were most likely first domesticated.

However, there are many breeds of horse that originated in Japan.

The Kiso horse, Hokkaido, Noma, Yonaguni—countless varieties.

So, in that sense, Japan does have many native breeds, it’s just that they were all engineered, again, by humans.

So, it really depends on how you want to look at it.

Ultimately, horses are only really ‘native’ to North America—everywhere else is just where they’ve been spread by humans.

So, what about sheer numbers, then?

How many horses are there in Japan?

How many horses are in Japan?

As of 2019, the number of livestock horses in Japan was around 78,000 individuals.

These are horses bred for pretty much any purpose, including racing, food, leather—lots of different things.

The numbers on wild horses are sketchier, but there are not very many.

Japan is a much bigger country than you might think, so there is space for wild horses, but they just haven’t been very successful in Japan, for one reason or another.

Compare the number of livestock horses to the number of another country.

In the UK, for example, there are closer to a million horses in livestock—around 850,000.

This gives you an idea of how comparatively rare horses are in Japan, which has a much larger population than the UK.

So, now you understand why I said they are relatively uncommon.

So, are horse activities popular over there?

Is horse riding popular in Japan?

In the past, it has not been as popular as it is in other parts of the world, or as other activities are in Japan.

Again, there are relatively few horses, so opportunities to try horse riding are much less common.

That said, there are still many in the country who love the hobby, and, in fact, it has become much more popular since the Tokyo Olympics of 2020.

Since then, the sport has flourished, and we can only expect that it will continue to become more popular across the country.

In general, though, compared with other countries where it is more ingrained in the culture, like here in the U.S., horse riding is still relatively unpopular in Japan.

What are horses used for in Japan?

Much the same things that they are used for everywhere else in the world, except just slightly less commonly.

As I said, horse riding is one of the biggest new activities of which people are becoming more fond, so breeding horses for commercial riding is one of the big things.

Japan is a country very keenly aware of its own history and tradition, and these things are very important to it.

Reenactors very often use horses for Samurai displays and reconstructions, again in much the same way they are used in Europe for medieval reconstructions.

Horse is a more common delicacy in Japan than it is in other parts of the world.

Indeed, even raw horse meat (called ‘sakura’, or cherry blossom, for its pink color) is enjoyed by many Japanese people.

They also eat horse jerky and other horse product.

So, again, horses are used in much the same way they are in the rest of the world—they’re just not used as much!

So, Japanese history is steeped in the importance of horses—Japan was at war with itself for many centuries, and war horses were essential to the trade.

Today, there are fewer horses in Japan than you might expect to find in other countries with similar horse riding industries, but there are a few reasons for this.

In any case, there are some breeds which are considered ‘native’ to Japan, but ultimately, all horses in Japan were put there by humans.