About Oshiuma Tanbou: how the data is gathered and what gets listed
Oshiuma Tanbou is a personal site that checks, horse by horse and with sources, where retired Japanese racehorses live, whether you can visit them and how you can support them. It currently lists 245 horses.
Researched and edited by Horudan, who holds shares in three horses through a racing syndicate and writes about the business and money of racing on note.
Why this site exists
When you try to follow a horse you loved after it retires, the information is scattered across organisations and you never get to "so where is it now?". The Retired Horse Association, TCC Japan, the Meritorious Horse Keeping Support Programme (meiba.jp), the Racehorse Hometown Information Centre, and then each farm's own social media. None of them can be searched across by horse name. Building that cross-index is the point of this site.
How the data is gathered
Sources are cross-checked in this order.
- The roster pages and official social accounts of the farms that keep the horses
- The Retired Horse Association's foster horse list, TCC Japan's horses, the Meritorious Horse Keeping Support Programme (meiba.jp) and the Racehorse Hometown Information Centre
- Racing records, years of birth and sex come first from JRA official data (JRA-VAN / JRA horse data), and from Oddspark for regional horses
Search engine summaries are not used. They have been seen to get sex, coat colour and wins wrong, so every figure is checked against official wording. netkeiba is not scraped, for terms-of-use reasons.
Judgement calls in what gets listed
A farm listing is not proof a horse is alive
A farm's roster page can keep a horse listed for some time after it has died. We have found a horse still shown as resident that had died months earlier. A name on a roster is therefore not enough: the individual page and any notice of death are checked as well.
Dates are not bumped for horses we could not confirm
Rewriting every horse's confirmation date at each update would make the site look permanently fresh. It would also let stale information wear a new face. Only horses actually re-checked in a given round get a new date here. As it stands: 4 horses on October 4, 2026, 4 horses on October 3, 2026, 4 horses on October 2, 2026, and more.
What is left out
- Photographs and video. Nothing is used without permission; the site is text and official links
- Reposting updates written by clubs or farms. Nothing is summarised here; links go to the original
- Horses still owned by racing syndicates, where retirement arrangements are not yet settled
Before you visit or support
A farm is where horses live, not a tourist attraction. Each horse's page reproduces the published guidance on visiting hours and reservations as it stands, but that changes with closures and with the horse's condition. Always check the farm's own site or social media before you go; the older the confirmation date on a page, the more that matters.
If you find something that does not match
Every horse's page lists all the source URLs used. If the official page behind a link is newer than what you read here, the official page is right. Moves and deaths are folded in at the next update.
Everything here is personal research based on published information, not an official announcement by any farm or organisation. Before you visit or give money, check the primary source yourself.