Horses

Noble Bloodline Inherited by Horses in Eastern Hokkaido
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The Japan Railway Nemuro Main Line is the longest railroad line (as a trunk line, not including branch lines) in the vast land of Hokkaido. It runs through the easternmost part of Japan and has a total length of 444 km. The section connecting Kushiro and Nemuro is nicknamed the “Hanasaki (Flower Blossom) Line.” The beauty of the scenery seen through the train windows is widely beloved. The area where the Hanasaki Line runs is, in fact, a sacred place in the history of horse breeding in Japan.

If you look into the origins of horse breeding in modern Japan, Nemuro and Kushiro, which the Hanasaki Line connects, were the center of the industry. Through the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan’s native horses were found to be unsuitable for military use. Therefore, at the beginning of the 20th century, the government set up a new organization called the Horse Policy Bureau and began to improve the Japanese horse. The ranchers of Nemuro and Kushiro were among the first to respond to this government initiative. These ranchers imported Western stallions such as Percheron, Breton, and Anglo-Norman, and crossed them with Hokkaido Japanese mares, nicknamed “Dosanko,” to create the ideal horse. These horses have robust limbs, strong pulling power, can carry loads on their backs, and are easy to handle because they are not too big compared to Western breeds. Through trial and error, many such horses were produced. As a result, Eastern Hokkaido became famous as an advanced horse-breeding region. The horse markets in Attoko, Nemuro City, which remains as a station name on the Hanasaki Line, and in Otanoshike, Kushiro City, on the Kushiro Main Line, attracted people and horses like a haze. In Attoko, there is still a monument dedicated to Horse-headed Kannon (Hayagriva). Its presence seems to indicate the prosperity of the horse market in Attoko, which was said to be the largest in the East. It could be said that the horses living on Yururi Island, along with such records and memories, tell the history of modern horse breeding from the east of Hokkaido to the present day.

Creating the ideal horse…. One of the horse breeds created by the passion of the ranchers of Eastern Hokkaido is the “Japanese Kushiro” breed. A statue of the breed is currently installed in front of Otanoshike Station. This breed was first introduced as a draft horse in 1932 after 40 years of work by the Kushiro Livestock Cooperative. In addition to being used as a military horse, the breed was also used as a farm horse to cultivate the land of Hokkaido. When the Showa Emperor went to Hokkaido, the “Sojo-Kushiro” (“Sojo” means presenting something to the Emperor) breed was introduced to the world as an improved breed suitable for riding. Both attracted worldwide attention and were famous horses that marked the history of horse breeding in Japan. The horses living on Yururi Island have inherited the blood of the Japanese Kushiro and Sojo-Kushiro breeds.

After the war, agricultural machinery became widely available. Horses lost their jobs in farming, and decreased in number. Both the Japanese Kushiro and Sojo-Kushiro breeds have already disappeared. Even before that, the Nambu horse, the ancestor of the Dosanko, was already extinct. However, the horses of Yururi Island are the only remaining remnants of those horses lost in history. The descendants of the Japanese Kushiro and Sojo-Kushiro breeds can no longer be seen anywhere else but on the island.

As you can see from the murals of the Lascaux caves, horses are one of the oldest animals that humans have accompanied. We can say that people have developed their culture with the help of horses for farming and cargo handling. Of course, the situation is the same in Hokkaido. From the settlement of Hokkaido in the early Meiji era (1868-1912) to the confusion of the post-war period, people and horses have lived side by side through these difficult times. Especially here in Eastern Hokkaido, the bond between people and horses has been very strong and deep. Yururi is a small island floating in front of Kombumori Fishing Port, a 20-minute walk from Kombumori Station on the Hanasaki Line. Horses with the memories of the relationship between people and horses in their bones are galloping freely in the uninhabited grasslands today.