中世日本の馬について

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書誌事項

タイトル別名
  • Studies on the Medieval Japanese Horses
  • チュウセイ ニホン ノ ウマ ニ ツイテ

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説明

The writer investigated, by measuring, the bones of the medieval Japanese horses excavated in Zaimokuza, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, and obtained the following result.<BR>1) The remains of the medieval horses hereinafter referred to as the Kamakura horses are supposed to consist chiefly of the bones of horses belonging to the Kamakura government forces and those belonging to their opponent, the Nitte forces, killed when Yoshisada Nitta attacked Kamakura in 1333. Some of the bones are of horses kept about that time, that is, in the Kamakura and the Muromachi Era.<BR>2) The withers height, estimated from the greatest length of the bones of the four limbs (metacarpus, metatarsus, radius, tibia, humerus and femur), is 109-140cm, its mean value being 129.4 77±1.098cm. Most of the Kamakura horses are medium-sized horses belonging to the Japanese prehistoric age, but some are found to be small-sized ones (Fig. 1). Being military horses, the Kamakura horse seems to have been considerably larger in size than any other horse, at that time. Therefore it can be assumed that the whole number of the, small-sized horses at that time occupied a greater percentage than that of the small-sized horses found in Kamakura did. Of those horses of the Kamakura Era, samall-sized ones are supposed to have been discarded, since military horses of large size were wanted in a great number because of gradual progress in civilization. In Japan proper, at present, there are very few native kinds survived, including the Kiso horse, whose withers height is 124-143cm with mean value of 133cm.<BR>3) In respect to the length-width index of the metacarpus and metatarsus, and to the degree of degeneration of the ulna, metacarpus II and IV, and metatarsus II and IV, the Kamakura horses are analogous to those of the Japanese prehistoric age and to the native kinds of the present Japan, but are different from the Mongol horses in many points.<BR>As the horses of Arabian pedigree were introduced into China through Central Asia in the Han Era of China (about 200 B. C.) and crossed with the Mongol horses, it must be considered that those horses of a certain pedigree, which must be taken as having been introduced from the Continent and became the origin of the Japanese native horses, were greatly affected by those of Arabian pedigree.

収録刊行物

  • 日本畜産学会報

    日本畜産学会報 28 (5), 301-306, 1957

    公益社団法人 日本畜産学会

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