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By the end of 1965, Japan looked every bit the enlightened, science-led, technology-driven society it advertised. Its booming economy had produced the world’s fastest train, the capital had recrafted its skyline for the most advanced Olympics yet and its leading physicist had won a Nobel Prize for work on quantum electrodynamics.
Then, in a moment that stands out even from humanity’s long catalogue of loopiness, the place went mad: unscientifically, mysteriously and in a way that the rest of the world, six decades later and still in constant danger of loopiness, should pay close attention to.
In 1966 — a hinoeuma, or “fire horse”, year under an astrological superstition — the fear of giving birth to a wild, destructive and unmarriageable daughter induced a nationwide collapse in pregnancies.
This wasn’t just a few people taking horoscopes seriously. The number of babies born in Japan in 1966 plummeted by 463,000 from the previous year, representing a 25 per cent drop. To reduce opportunity risk, marriages also tumbled by 10 per cent. By the end of 1967, with the threat lifted, births had rebounded by an astounding 42 per cent. On historic charts, the spasmodic V-shape makes 1966 look like a colossal data error.
Demographers who study the phenomenon assert that nothing quite like this has ever happened before or since. Even the previous Japanese hinoeuma year in 1906 didn’t produce such a striking effect. Wars, natural disasters and disease epidemics can leave sizeable craters in demographic charts, but this was none of those: this was belief, choice and collective mania at their sanity-squeezing worst. Plus, somewhere in there, a combination of social and economic factors that caused superstition to be indulged to the ultimate degree.
Hinoeuma years, which combine the animals of the Chinese zodiac with 10 celestial signs, come around on a 60-year cycle. The next one is 2026. That should, says demographer Ryohei Mogi, unravel some of the mystery around what was going on six decades ago, and what shape things are in now. If the superstition is alive and well, Japanese couples should in theory have started planning against the peril of a fire horse child from around March this year, and will remain appropriately cautious for another six months.
Clearly, a huge drop in the birth rate, even if only temporary, is something Japan can ill afford right now. Births in 2024 fell to their lowest annual level since records began in 1899; successive governments have declared this a demographic crisis threatening life as Japan knows it.
The good news (but hold the celebrations) is that Japan appears to be ignoring superstition this time. A spokesperson for the health ministry says there is currently no evidence from the nation’s medical system to suggest any sharp impending dip in the birth rate.
But that is cold comfort, says Mogi. A great deal has changed in the breeding business since the 1960s: couples marrying later in life, and forming families where both parents are working, creates significant pressures. Many couples simply do not have a “spare year” in which to postpone a birth, no matter how compelling the rumour that a fire horse daughter will commit arson or shorten her husband’s life.
In 1966, according to one authoritative study, 90 per cent of the decline in births affected the production of second or third children, back when Japan still had plenty of those. Marriages started younger and, against the background of a resurgent postwar economy, families expanded in a position of greater financial stability and optimism. The countryside, where superstition was strongest, was prosperous in a way it is not today.
And this, argues Mogi and others, is the sad aspect of the expected 2026 hinoeuma non-observance. In 1966, the chart-warping indulgence of woo-woo was the muscle-flex of a country riding as high as any could: the peace dividend was at its fattest, the economic rebirth its most vigorous, the psychological comfort its most beguiling. Japan is not currently in catastrophic shape, but it cannot possibly replicate that. In fact, it has not been able to do so for decades.
Japan’s 1966 lunacy, which achieved pervasiveness half a century before social media, is instructive in a world of vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial and other collective embraces of the unscientific. Often, the interpretation is that these are an expression of anger, fear or desperation. Japan provides a reminder that madness can just as potently emerge from an excess of comfort, confidence and conviction.
