Japanese horses are thought to derive from stock brought at several different times from various parts of the Asian mainland; the first such importations took place by the sixth century at the latest. Horses were used for farming – as
pack-animals although not for
draught power; until the advent of
firearms in the later sixteenth century, they were much used for warfare. The horses were not large: remains of some 130 horses have been excavated from battlefields dating to the
Kamakura period (1185–1333 AD); they ranged from in height at the
withers. The Noma may originate from the small islands of the
Seto Inland Sea between
Shikoku and
Honshū, where it may have been used for transport. According to one account, in the early sixteenth century the
daimyō of the
Iyo-Matsuyama Han of Shikoku wanted to breed horses for military use. Larger horses were kept for that purpose, while smaller ones were given to farmers, who found them useful as pack-animals on steep terrain. The Noma is thought to derive from these. There were not many of them; the total number in the mid-1800s is estimated at about three hundred. After the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, there was pressure to breed much larger horses for warfare. Large foreign horses were imported, and the rearing of the small traditional indigenous breeds was forbidden. Numbers of the Noma fell sharply. Some isolated farmers kept a few for farm work, but with the
mechanisation of agriculture after the
Second World War, their usefulness decreased further. By 1978 there were six Noma horses remaining; two were in the in
Tobe, and four were kept by a private breeder. A government-funded reserve, the Noma Uma Highland, was established in 1989 by the city of
Imabari, in
Ehime Prefecture of Shikoku; it started with thirty of the horses. By 2008 the number had risen to eighty-four. A study of
microsatellite variation among Japanese horse breeds in 2003 found the Noma to be
closely related to three other Japanese small-island breeds, the
Misaki, the
Tokara, and
Yonaguni. == Use ==