Page 163 - Changing Living Spaces

Horses in Early Modern Japan

Figure 14 NDLDC, Miyazaki Y. Nōgyō Zensho

collection. However, in the latter half of the early modern period, farmers
also began to buy fertilizers made from dried sardines. Horses, of course,
also played an important role in transporting loads. In the Edo period,
some peasants lived in ‘magariya’, where houses were connected to the
barn in the form of the letter ‘L’. Horses were livestock with which they
lived under the same roof; therefore, it was considered taboo to eat horse
meat. Many households kept one horse, and wealthier households had
two or more horses. In Shimomoriya, some households owned five horses.
There are local differences in the number of horses owned. According
to Kanehira (2015), in the Morioka Domain (encompassing present-day
Iwate and Aomori prefectures), which was also known for horse produc-
tion, there was an estimated average of 2.4 horses per household, based
on the number of horses recorded in a fire incident. However, this figure
could include not only horses owned by villagers, but also those that were
leased. Kanehira also points out that other documents indicate that one
farmer owned at least 10 horses, another farmer owned a maximum of 24
horses, and some farmers without mochidaka (their own fields) had hors-
es in their possession.
In the domain of Nihonmatsu, a farmer who successfully raised a good
horse could sell it to the warrior class for a high price. It is believed that

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