Horses in Japan

So within the past two days in two separate Japanese history courses (taught by two separate professors), I’ve been told that horses were not indigenous to the Japanese archipelago. They were first introduced in the middle of the 5th century through Korea.

I heard that and my ears pricked up — I know I’ve read somewhere about horses in Japan before the middle of the Kofun Period…

Oh, yes! Professor J. Edward Kidder, Jr. has the following to say on page 291 note 50 of “Himiko and Japan’s Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology”:

The strange mix of nonexistent domestic and wild animals and a single bird [in the Gishi Wajinden, an ancient Chinese text discussing Japan] leaves the way open for a large number that might exist on the islands. Big cats had disappeared during the Jomon period, the Siberian mountain lion being the chief one. Horses have come and gone from the ancient Japanese scene, one vocal school of thought claiming that fluorine absorption and carbon-14 tests on horse skeletons from “so-called Jomon sites” have proved to be of recent animals (Mabuchi 1993:4, 652). On the other hand, the shell-mound database indicates they had at least existed there, but perhaps were not seen within the Yamatai polity as they were not found to be of much use. The type was the small Kiso horse, named after the area through which the Kiso River runs, from Nagano prefecture through Gifu and into Ise Bay west of Nagoya city in Aichi prefecture. This database of the Jomon period lists 532 sites with horse bones, starting about the time of Late Jomon (Oikawa, 62:7). They apparently had not all been eaten or become extinct, as some Yayoi horses were a little larger (Mori 1974b:236-237), perhaps as a result of domestication. Why so many “modern” horses are said to be buried in shell-mounds is beyond explanation. Korean horses were introduced around the middle of the Kofun period, and were never very large…

I believe a better statement to make about Japanese horses would be something like: While the small Kiso horse is indigenous to the Japanese archipelago, larger horses used for riding and warfare were not imported from Korea until the middle of the 5th century A.D. It would seem that the earlier Kiso horse decreased in number before the introduction of the continental/peninsular horses.

Update: *Another* professor told me the same story about horses not being indigenous to the Japanese archipelago, today.

Another Update: I recently read about the unearthing of Yayoi horse bells. I am going to look around, because I’d like to see something as startling as this mentioned in more than one text. If I can find a second or third mention, I’ll post the citations. That would be fascinating.

So as it stands, I’m still not convinced by the customary view that Jomon or Yayoi horses died out (evidenced by no mention of them in the Gishi Wajinden, a Chinese text on the Japanese of the 3rd century) before the introduction of Korean horses.