In parts of Asia – including Japan and China – a dating system based on the monthly cycles of the Moon’s phases was used. The lunar calendar was as first started in China around 425 AD; it was later brought to Japan by Buddhist monks. The calendar is based on a 60-year cycle broken into smaller cycles of 12 years each. The horse is one of the 12 animals in the Japanese Zodiac. In the kanji characters that characterize written Japanese, “horse” is written as “馬.” But for the Japanese Zodiac, “horse” is written as “午.” No one is sure why this is; the characters may have originally had use as order/direction markers in the zodiac and animal names were applied later. The “Hour of the Horse” is the two hours straddling noon. AM (gozen 午前) and PM (gogo 午後) are before and after the horse, respectively.
You may wonder, “How was the year for horses—the 7th animal in the 12-year cycle—chosen?” Well, according to legend, one day, the Buddha organized a large dinner for himself and 12 others. All the animals of the Buddha’s kingdom were invited. The Buddha decreed that the honor of dining with him would be granted to the first twelve animals that arrived. In addition, based on the order in which an animal arrived, that animal would become the animal symbolizing that year. The animals, of course, were excited to hear the news and rushed to the home of the Buddha.
Although he arrived after some of the other animals, the horse arrived in plenty of time to gain his spot in the zodiac. However, the snake had hidden in the horse’s mane. When they arrived at dinner, the snake jumped out, scaring the horse. Thus, because he got to dinner first, the snake won an earlier place in the zodiac calendar (2025, for example). This also apparently explains why horses are easily scared. Snakes, of course, cannot be trusted.
People born under the sign of the horse are said to be happy and sociable. They are adaptable and successful in many areas. However, they may also become quickly bored and they may fail to complete tasks.
That said, 2026 is the year of a particularly inauspicious sign, the Fire Horse (hinoeuma 丙午). The Fire Horse sign occurs every 60 years (it’s the 43rd copy of the 60-year Japanese zodiac cycle). Superstition says that people born under this sign are irresponsible and rebellious, and, in general, are bad news. In particular, women born in the Year of the Fire Horse have a bad personality, will sap their family’s finances, neglect their children, and drive their father and husband to an early grave—even kill them. This superstition is taken quite seriously. In fact, in the last year of the Fire Horse, in 1966, there was a dramatic drop in birth rates compared to 1965 and 1967, because Japanese people practiced birth control, and even used abortion, in an effort to not have children during the year of the Fire Horse. They also subsequently lied about the birth years of their children (we see this sort of thing in horse barns, too, where a foal born on December 30th of the preceding year might be registered as being born in January of the following year).
The next year of the Fire Horse is 2026. BEWARE!
As you probably now, I’ve written a book about horses and horse medicine in premodern Japan, and you can see it (and other related items) if you CLICK HERE. It’s a lot of fun! If you’d like one, please click on the link and I’ll ship it out right away. Thanks!
