Fire Horse

[2] 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".

[a] In his novel Gubijinzō [ja] published in 1907, Natsume Soseki describes Fujio, an evil woman who deceives the main character, as being "a fire horse".

[citation needed] 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 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.

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.

[16] The city of Kurume in Fukuoka Prefecture 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".

Japanese birth and death rates since 1950. The drop in 1966 was due to it being a hinoe-uma year. [ 1 ]