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".