Oblivion wrote:
> In alot of the samurai movies I've seen there are very few horses. Were horses scarse in japan? & was it so that only the higher classes could have them?
>
Oblivion,
The answer to your question is 'yes' and 'no'.
Japan had very few actual horses. Rather they had ponies, which are much smaller than the horses seen on the continent.
Also to be taken into account is the arable land needed to graze & raise horse. Which Japan has rather little. So the 'warhorse' was usually kept for
high-ranking people, or the very rich (which many times meant the same thing). Even then horses used were just ponies trained & groomed for war (read a
little bigger)... Japanese people are small... :)
Note that I am no authority on this, but those were my 2cents (in euro)
JP