Photo/Illutration Eiji Konishi watches over sick and injured horses in Yusui, Kagoshima Prefecture, on Nov. 15. (Ken Murakami)

YUSUI, Kagoshima Prefecture—Herds of horses trotted and grazed on a gentle slope dotted with pastures at the foot of Mount Kirishimayama here.

The 11 pastures are maintained by Horse Trust, a ranch for about 150 retired racing and riding horses.

The ranch covers about 100 hectares (1 square kilometer) in the municipalities of Yusui and Isa, Kagoshima Prefecture.

The premises offer hilly grassland and woods that provide protection from wind and rain.

But Eiji Konishi, Horse Trust’s chief director, explained the most important thing about the ranch.

“Horses live in herds in nature,” Konishi said. “It is very important to allow them to be with horses that they get along well with. On top of that, we are giving our horses freedom of choice in what they do.

“We are maintaining these pastures out of sheer desire for the happiness of the horses.”

Konishi, 67, has been an animal lover since childhood.

Born and raised in Kagawa Prefecture until his high school days, Konishi enrolled at Rakuno Gakuen University in faraway Hokkaido out of his deep affection for animals. “Rakuno” means “dairy farming.”

“I went to the university because it has a riding club, which allowed me to be with animals all the time,” he said.

Konishi has since fallen for horses. On the sidelines of his work as a riding instructor in Hokkaido, he went to New Zealand and Australia every winter to hone his horse training skills.

Before he turned 50, a thought persisted in Konishi’s mind.

He had been relying on horses for his livelihood as an instructor, and he had brought horses into human society by training the animals.

He realized, however, that so many horses were being “disposed of” when they were no longer of use.

According to the farm ministry and other sources, between 8,000 and 9,000 horses are produced every year in Japan for purposes unrelated to food. Around 90 percent of those animals become racehorses and the others are trained as riding horses.

The racehorses generally retire in old age, and only a handful of the truly successful ones are used for breeding. A lucky few are repurposed for riding. And the rest are disposed of.

But they again reach “retirement” at around 20 years old at riding clubs. Many are then slaughtered for pet food.

Konishi said he thought the harsh reality for retired horses was “too much for what comes at the end of exploitation by humans.”

He decided to build a ranch to save as many retired horses as possible in a sustainable fashion. He set up a nonprofit organization in 2006 to open the ranch.

Japan is home to an estimated 200 facilities for retired horses, including extremely small establishments. Between 500 and 1,000 horses spend their remaining years at these places.

Konishi’s Horse Trust is the largest of the facilities.

The natural life span of horses is 25 to 30 years. If there were no disposals, more than 40,000 retired horses would be living in Japan.

“I know it is realistically difficult to continue keeping them all alive,” Konishi said. “But I still believe we shouldn’t give up on efforts to save as many horses as possible.”

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