It characterised by very short legs – the result of hereditary chondrodystrophy – and a large upright tail that reaches much higher than the head of the bird.

[8]: 20  The earliest recognisable depiction of a Chabo in Japanese art dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century; a short-legged chicken with tall upright tail shown in the Portrait of Jacoba Maria van Wassenaer by Jan Steen, painted in about 1660, is believed to be a Chabo.

[9]: 171 Japan was effectively closed to all foreign trade from 1636 until about the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

[9]: 174 [10][11]: 252  A breed society, the Japanese Bantam Club, was formed during the Crystal Palace Poultry Show of 1912.

[12]: 142  This trait is caused by the creeper gene, Cp, which displays the standard behaviour of recessive lethal alleles:[13] when short-legged birds are bred, 25% of the embryos are homozygous for the lethal allele, and die in shell; 50% are heterozygous, and develop into short-legged birds; the remaining 25% are homozygous for the non-lethal allele, and develop longer legs, making them unsuitable for showing.