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The fire horse or bing wu () is the 43rd combination of the
sexagenary cycle The sexagenary cycle, also known as the Stems-and-Branches or ganzhi ( zh, 干支, gānzhī), is a cycle of sixty terms, each corresponding to one year, thus a total of sixty years for one cycle, historically used for recording time in China and t ...
. According to a superstition, girls born in such a year will grow up to kill their husbands. Therefore, birthrates in
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
tend to see a sharp decline.


Years


Superstition


Origin

There is a superstition that "a woman born in the year of the fire horse has a strong temperament and shortens her husband's life". It is said that the superstition in the early Edo period that "there are many fires in the year of the fire horse", changed to a superstition about women's marriage because
Yaoya Oshichi , literally "greengrocer Oshichi", was a daughter of the greengrocer Tarobei, who lived in the Hongō neighborhood of Edo at the beginning of the Edo period. She was burned at the stake for attempting to commit arson. The story (see below) becam ...
was believed to have been born during the fire horse. In the Edo period, all human ages were counted using
East Asian age reckoning Countries in the East Asian cultural sphere (China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and their diasporas) have traditionally used specific methods of reckoning a person's numerical age based not on their birthday but the calendar year, and what age one is ...
, and if Yaoya Oshichi was born during the fire horse in 1666, then she would have been 18 years old in 1683 when she was burned at the stake. However in various biographies, such as that of
Ihara Saikaku was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later ...
, she is 16 years old. , in his jōruri ''Yaoya Oshichi'', placed Oshichi's birth as during the fire horse, which influenced the jōruri by et al. to say the same. in his work states that Yaoya Oshichi being 11 years old when she hung a plaque at Tennō-ji in 1676 was the basis for assigning her birth year to 1666. Ki no Kaion had a strong influence on the theatrical world, and the story in Bunkō's ''Kinsei Kōto Chobunshū'' has long been considered a true story, although it has been denied in modern times.


Births in 1906

This superstition continued even into the
Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...
, and in 1906 the number of births decreased by about 4% from the previous year. In some cases, the births of boys were reported to have been shifted to the year before or after they were actually born. Around 1924, when women born in 1906 were of marriageable age, there was a series of stories denying the superstition and reports of suicides of women whose marriage proposals were broken off, suggesting that the superstition of fire horse births affected women's marriages. In his novel published in 1907,
Natsume Soseki Natsume (夏目, 夏芽, 棗, なつめ or ナツメ) is a feminine given name and a surname, and may refer to: People with the given name *, a Japanese light novel author and manga writer *, a Japanese model, singer, and presenter *, a Japanese m ...
describes Fujio, an evil woman who deceives the main character, as being "a fire horse". The novelist
Ango Sakaguchi was a Japanese writer of short stories and novels and an essayist. His real name was . Biography Born in Niigata, Sakaguchi was one of a group of young Japanese writers to rise to prominence in the years immediately following Japan's defeat i ...
, who was born in this year, was given the name , which means , and left a story in his writings about how he was told by relatives that it was "lucky he was born a man". Sakaguchi predicted that this superstition would not go away, which would turn out to be the case in 1966.


Births in 1966

This superstition remained strong in the
Shōwa era The was the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa ( Hirohito) from December 25, 1926, until his death on January 7, 1989. It was preceded by the Taishō era. The pre-1945 and post-war Shōwa periods are almos ...
, and the birth rate in 1966 dropped 25% from the previous year.http://www.jil.go.jp/institute/zassi/backnumber/2007/12/pdf/017-028.pdf Many couples avoided having children or had abortions, especially in rural and regional areas and the number of births was extremely low compared to other years, with only 1,360,974 births. On the other hand, the number of births in the previous year and the following year increased. Since there were fewer children born in 1966, it was often discussed at the time whether it was easier to take high school and college entrance examinations in this school year (the population including early-borns in 1967 was about 1.6 million) than in other years, but there was no significant difference in the general college entrance rate. While no such increase was seen, the rate of entry into public universities increased in 1985. Additionally, in 1985 the first child rate was 50.9%, the highest ever in statistical history. On the other hand, Japanese local governments took the following actions against fire horse superstitions: In November 1965, the Yamagata District Legal Affairs Bureau of the
Ministry of Justice A Ministry of Justice is a common type of government department that serves as a justice ministry. Lists of current ministries of justice Named "Ministry" * Ministry of Justice (Abkhazia) * Ministry of Justice (Afghanistan) * Ministry of Just ...
sponsored the "Fire Horse Banishment Campaign" in Yamagata City, and on the 21st of the same month, a parade was held in the city to raise awareness of the issue. According to the Legal Affairs Bureau, this was due to a number of consultations regarding the issue of childbearing, which led to divorce settlements and harassment from neighbors. A similar movement was also underway in Kasukawa-mura in
Gunma Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Gunma Prefecture has a population of 1,937,626 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 6,362 km2 (2,456 sq mi). Gunma Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture and Fukushima ...
(now Kasukawa-cho,
Maebashi is the capital city of Gunma Prefecture, in the northern Kantō region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 335,352 in 151,171 households, and a population density of 1100 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . It wa ...
), led by the village mayor, who declared it a "village of banishment of superstition". The village office conducted a survey of 1,400 women born in 1906 and the years before and after, and worked to publicize the fact that fire horse superstitions have no basis. The city of
Kurume is a city in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of June 1, 2019, the city has an estimated population of 303,579 and a population density of 1,320 persons per km². The total area is 229.96 km². On February 5, 2005, the town of Kitano (from ...
in
Fukuoka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Fukuoka Prefecture has a population of 5,109,323 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,986 Square kilometre, km2 (1,925 sq mi). Fukuoka Prefecture borders S ...
strongly rejected fire horse beliefs in its public relations paper, calling it "a fairy tale from once upon a time", "a truly strange custom most unbecoming of a scientific Japan, which last year produced its second Nobel Prize winner", and "of the world of fairy tales".


Births in 2026

The next year of the fire horse will be 2026. It is speculated the trend will not continue this year.


Footnotes


References


Annotations

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinoe uma Chinese astrology Superstitions of Japan