The Japanese word for fool or idiot is baka, but few people know that it can be written with characters for horse and deer. It’s probably just a case of ateji, though, which is the process of assigning characters to loanwords based on their sounds, not their meanings.
When you look at Japanese culture, you don’t really find stories of horses being foolish or anything like that. Instead, they’re almost always portrayed as divine creatures or the stuff of nightmares, with nothing in between. Let’s take a closer look at horses in Japanese mythology.
Image of Shio no Choji from the “Ehon Hyakumonogatari” picture book (1841)
Chojiro Goes From Salty to Horsey
Up in Hokuriku, northwestern Japan, a story is told of Shio no Chojiro (Salty Chojiro), a man who liked to eat like a horse and, aptly, enjoyed horse meat. This was back during the Edo period when eating animal flesh was still considered taboo. Luckily for Chojiro, though, he was rich, so the rules didn’t apply to him.
Whenever one of his hundreds of horses died, Chojiro would have it butchered and pickled in salt, hence his nickname. However, with time, his luck ran out. He lost his money, and was down to just one old workhorse, which eventually worked its way into Chojiro’s stomach.
After that, Chojiro started having nightmares about the horse biting his throat out. Then, in the waking world, the ghost of Chojiro’s lunch would continue the psychic assault by appearing to him daily at the precise hour it was butchered. The ghost horse would then force itself down Chojiro’s gullet into his stomach where it would violently kick him.
Doctors examined Chojiro but couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him. They probably stopped themselves from declaring him “fit as a horse,” though, out of consideration for his suffering. He eventually died from all the horsing around and, the legend goes that when they found his body, it was bent like that of an old workhorse.
If Someone Asks You To Go Up Against a Japanese Horse, Just Say ‘Neigh’
Some of the scariest creatures in Japanese mythology, including kappa river imps, enko, yamawaro and hyosube, knew not to mess with horses. Nobody really knows why, but here’s one suggestion: even ignoring the legend of Salty Chojiro, myths about horses are often pure horror.
The story of Mezu is one such example. A nightmarish demon in Japanese Buddhism, he took the form of a massive man with a horse’s head and was one of the gatekeepers of hell. He was also the one that the King of Hell sent to retrieve escaped souls. Frankly, it’s criminal that there isn’t a manga, anime or even a light novel based on this premise.
Western Kyushu also tells a tale of the sanity-shattering sagari spirit which took the form of a malformed horse’s head. It was said to drop down from hackberry trees to scream at unsuspecting passersby.
Sun Goddess Amatersau emerges from the cave. By Shunsai Toshimasa (1887)
Mounts (and Heads) of the Gods
Historically, horses have also been connected with divinity, dating back as early as the 8th century, which is when the Kojiki — Japan’s oldest literary work — was composed.
Book One mentions that when Amaterasu, the goddess of the Sun, oversaw the weaving of sacred robes, her brother Susanoo, “punched a hole in the roof of the weaving hall and dropped through it a piebald colt of heaven that had been skinned backward from its tail.”
This desecration of a heavenly horse caused Amaterasu to retreat to a cave, plunging the world into darkness. It says a lot about the importance of horses, which have since become objects of worship in Shinto for well over a millennium.
The practice of shinme offerings began during the Nara period and involved real horses being gifted to shrines so they could become mounts for the shrine deity.
Some shrines still keep actual horses, while most have replaced them with symbolic wooden plaques that used to, and sometimes still do, have pictures (called e in Japanese) of horses (uma) on them. And that’s why the wooden plaques in shrines and temples that people write wishes on are called ema.
Bato Kannon (Horse-Headed Kannon) combines the horse’s divine and frightful nature into one handy deity. Bato is the fierce form of the goddess of mercy and compassion, reminding people that forgiveness does not equal weakness.
Usually depicted with three angry human faces and a horse’s head on top, Bato Kannon aids souls in the Buddhist animal realm and protects horses in the human world using swords, axes and clubs that it holds in its two to eight arms.
Many people pray to the goddess for strength, which she has a surplus of. Besides her multi-heads, she’s also said to be red all over, and although the myths don’t elaborate on it, we can make an educated guess that the red is probably blood. And if it is, it’s 100% not her blood.
The lesson here is: start carrying sugar cubes in your pocket to feed to any random horse you may come by to gain their favor. Just in case
