Hi-ja- O-rase-: Have You Ever Seen a Goat Fight?

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While watching the evening news a couple of Fridays ago, they had a segment about activities to do during the weekend. One of the events they highlighted was a local community festival that featured both lilies and goat fighting, which strangely enough are two things that I really enjoy, so on the following Sunday afternoon the family and I drove down to Oishi Park in Naha for the 13th Annual Lily Festival. Lilies are everywhere in Okinawa (in fact, the Easter lily is native to Okinawa and was introduced to the West in the 1800s) and late April and early May are prime lily season in Okinawa. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to the Lily Festival on Ie Jima Island this year (though I highly recommend it), so I was excited for a different lily festival option.  However, it was truly the mention of goat fighting that made me drive down to Naha to see the event. I had only been to goat fights once before on Sesoko Island in Motobu around 2016, but since then have wanted to see more.

Before getting into more details of the festival, I want to note that no goats are injured in the local goat fights. During the matches two goats are put in a pen together, with their owners, and allowed to do whatever they want. Sometimes this results in goats head butting each other, which male goats naturally do when they are in the vicinity of other male goats. However, these are not fights to the death, and the goats do not suffer injuries from the fighting. If any goat is in a dangerous situation the fight is stopped, and the goats are removed from the ring. In other matches, the goats completely ignore each other or even start sniffing or licking each other. The goats are allowed to do as they please, which is one of the joys of watching Okinawan goat fights as sometimes you will get an exciting match and other times you will just see goats frolicking with each other.

Unfortunately, the goats weren’t really feeling it during Sunday’s matches (apparently they are sensitive to the weather and it was drizzling), but we were able to see about 10 minutes of fighting. The announcer (yes, there are goat fight announcers here) let us know that the first match was between Thunder, a large black goat of foreign origins (apparently foreign goats are bigger than local goats, so the goat’s ethnicity(?) not breed, is always mentioned) versus a smaller, but also foreign, white goat, whose name I did not catch.  However, neither goat seemed very interested in fighting, so the smaller white goat was replaced with Thunder’s son, another white goat. (Unfortunately, I also did not catch his name.) Thunder must have had some issues to work out with his son, as the two started fighting rather quickly.  And by fighting, I mean Thunder started repeatedly jumping upwards and on the way down head butting his son, and Thunder’s son sort of defended himself, but mostly just accepted his father’s attack.  This continued for about 5 minutes until Thunder and his son’s horns got caught in each other. Once they were freed from each other by their owners, it was obvious that Thunder had won, and he got a round of applause. Then the goat fights were over. I forgot to take pictures during the goat fight, but if you are interested in seeing what the fights looked like, here is some footage from the First Lily Festival at Oishi Park in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=birax1CJxu8

Watching these fights got me quite interested in the history of the sport, so I decided to investigate it.  However, finding historical information about goat fighting in Okinawa was surprisingly difficult. A quick web search turned up a few past events, but not much else. There were several mentions of a Sesoko Goat Fighting Preservation Society (瀬底ピージャーオーラサイ保存会) but beyond the fact that it existed, there wasn’t much more and I  wonder if it still exists. A trip to my local library was also a bust. I found 5 books about Okinawan bull fighting but nothing about goat fighting. I checked the Okinawa Encyclopedia, and it had information on goat populations in pre- and post-war Okinawa along with a section on goat dishes, but nothing on goat fights. I also reviewed the official history of Sesoko Island since they are one of the most famous locations associated with goat fighting but couldn’t find any mention of the sport in the surprisingly thick book. Luckily, I also teach part-time at the University of the Ryukyus and have access to their library. There I found the jackpot that I never knew I was looking for, four books about goats in Okinawa.

Before getting more into the historical details of goat fighting, I wanted to provide a bit more information about the terminology associated with the sport.  Goat fighting is known by several names in Okinawa depending on where you are (which really demonstrates the linguistic diversity in Okinawa Prefecture). The fights I recently went to in Naha on Okinawa Island were called Hi-ja- O-rase- (ヒージャオーラセー), while on Sesoko Island, off the coast of Motobu, in the north of Okinawa Island, they are called Pi-ja- O-rasai (ピージャオーラサイ). On Tarama Island, off the coast of Miyako Island, they are called Pinda A-su (ピンダアース). It wouldn’t surprise me if there are other variations of the term that I am simply not familiar with. These are not Japanese words and come from the indigenous languages of the former Ryukyu Kingdom (the independent maritime nation that existed before the islands were forcibly annexed by Japan in 1879 and became Okinawa Prefecture. There are six recognized languages of the Ryukyus, often grouped under the term Shima Kutuba and hundreds of dialects of each of these six languages). Therefore, someone from mainland Japan who came to visit Okinawa would not be able to understand these terms and would likely call the sport something like Tō Yagi (闘山羊).

Looking more at the history of goats in Okinawa, like you will often find in discussions of Ryukyu and Okinawa’s early history, there is not a clear consensus on how goats originally got to the islands. Munetaka Hirakawa (平川宗隆), a veterinarian who has written three books about goats in Okinawa, in his book A Cultural History of Okinawan Goats: From History, Culture and Rearing to Restaurants (Okinawa no Yagi Bunkashi: Rekishi, Bunka, Shiiku Jotai kara Ryoriten made, 沖縄のヤギ文化誌　歴史・文化・飼育状況から料理店まで), lays out various theories regarding how goats arrived in Okinawa.  One theory is that originally goats raised by Muslims in the Philippines were introduced to Okinawa via Taiwan. Another thought is that goats were first introduced to Okinawa during the reign of King Sho Hashi (1422-1439). It is said that a Ryukyuan tributary mission returning home from China brought back a few goats to improve the lives of farmers in the Ryukyu Kingdom. Beyond these theories, we do know more about goats in Okinawa from the records of some Korean fishermen who were shipwrecked on Yonaguni Island in 1477. As they traveled through the islands of the Ryukyu Kingdom on their way to being repatriated to Korea, they kept detailed notes of what they saw. In their descriptions of their travels they stated that goats were only seen on the main island of Okinawa and were not found on any of the surrounding islands. This suggests that goats were a relatively new species on the islands in 1477 as they were not present on the outer islands yet, perhaps supporting the theory that goats were introduced during the reign of Sho Hashi?  Later historical documents regarding the Ryukyu Kingdom, including the Ryukyu Koku Yuraiki (琉球国由来記, 1713), and the Chuzan Denshin Roku (中山伝信録, 1721), both note that goats are one of the products of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which demonstrates at the very least that goats have been an important part of Ryukyuan and Okinawan culture for over 300 years.

While we know that goats have been in Okinawa for over 300 years, it is unclear when goat fighting became an event in Okinawa.  According to Hirakawa in his book, Why are Goats Loved in Okinawa?, (Okinawa de Naze Yagi ga Aisareruoka, 沖縄でなぜヤギが愛されるのか,) nobody knows exactly when goat fights started on Sesoko Island. However,  according to locals, goat fighting has taken place on the island since long ago. In another of Hirakawa’s books about goats, Goat Heaven (Hi-ja- Tengoku, ヒージャー天国), he expands upon the origins of goat fighting on Okinawa with a story by Wataru Nakada (仲田亘). Nakada was a key figure in goat fighting on Sesoko Island, as he spearheaded the yearly goat fighting festivals on Sesoko in 1995 as a tool to attract tourists and revitalize the local community.  According to Nakada, since there was little entertainment on Sesoko in the past (it is a small island and the island only became connected to Okinawa Island by bridge in 1985), the young men used to get together after working in the fields and drink. During one of these gatherings the men decided to put two goats together and see what happened.  This was the start of goat fighting.  On Sesoko almost every family owned goats, so goat fights were common at a variety of celebrations including children’s birthdays, graduations and celebrations for building new houses. It is said that bull fighting started in the Ryukyu Kingdom in the 1600s, so it isn’t hard to imagine that goat fighting could have started hundreds of years ago too, as another way for people long ago to entertain themselves in a world without TVs or the internet. (However, these are purely my own conjectures as all I can find is that goat fighting started long ago).

Sadly, goat fighting events are not as prevalent today. It appears that a combination of covid-19 and the death of Nakada in 2024 effectively put a stop to the tournaments on Sesoko Island, as there is very little information about goat fights happening there post-2020. However, it does appear that Tarama Island (off the coast of Miyako Island) recently held goat fights in May of 2025, and I was able to watch a few matches at the Lily Festival in Naha, so there are still chances to see this traditional Okinawan pastime.  Matches seem to take place most frequently in May (particularly during Golden Week) and October or November.

If you can watch a tournament you can expect a day of fun. Depending on the size of the tournament, goat fights can last for the entire day.  At the tournaments on Sesoko, there were two divisions for the goats, a lightweight category and a heavy weight category, which made for a lot of matches. However, you are not expected to stay for the entire time and can come and go freely. When each goat is put into the ring, they are allowed to do whatever they feel like.  Goats who decide to fight each other frequently use moves such as shomen wari, where the goats clash their horns against each other or a jumping move where a goat jumps up to intimidate his opponent and then sometimes puts their front hooves on their opponent’s horns. They can also use a variety of pushing moves such as when two goats push their heads against each other, or when one goat pushes their opponent down towards the ground with their shoulder.  There is usually an announcer who will let you know what the goats are doing and who is winning. Matches can vary from a minute or two up until 15 minutes and the winner from each match is decided based upon their fighting skills. 

In closing, I had one last thought regarding goat fighting. While researching the topic I found a surprising amount of information about goat dishes. In almost all the resources I viewed about goat fighting, they also mentioned restaurants that serve goat.  Also, many of the goat fighting tournaments actually also sell goat meat. The fact that people eat goat was not surprising as people in Okinawa traditionally eat goat. Some of the most famous dishes are goat soup or goat sashimi. While these dishes are not universally loved (many people say goat has a strong smell, so it is hard to eat) they are part of Okinawa cuisine. What was unexpected was for me that goat fighting and goat eating don’t naturally go together.  One celebrates the athleticism, strength and, at times, cuteness of goats, while the other involves the death and subsequent deliciousness of goat. Personally, I like to separate the two and not think about how the goats I am admiring may sooner or later become the goat dish that someone eats. As I eat meat, and have tried goat before, I don’t want to be a hypocrite and claim goat meat shouldn’t be sold at goat fights. The eating of goats truly is the final part of the cycle for these goats who are raised in peoples’ homes as farm animals. I just wanted to point out this different way of thinking.  Perhaps many Okinawans are still closer to the food system life cycle than myself, and they can simultaneously treasure their goats and understand that their final purpose is to be sold as meat. I know these comments leave this discussion on a bit of a darker note, but I hope that you have the opportunity to enjoy a goat fight while in Okinawa.

If you are further interested in the topic, unfortunately, I have not been able to find many resources about goat fighting in English. However, here are some suggestions for books about goats in Okinawa in Japanese:

• 平川宗隆、沖縄のヤギ文化誌　歴史・文化・飼育状況から料理店まで。Munetaka Hirakawa, Okinawa no Yagi Bunkashi: Rekishi, Bunka, Shiiku Jotai kara Ryoriten made, A Cultural History of Okinawan Goats: From History, Culture and Rearing to Restaurants)

• 平川宗隆、沖縄でなぜヤギが愛されるのか。 (Munetaka Hirakawa, Okinawa de Naze Yagi ga Aisareruoka, Why are Goats Loved in Okinawa?)

• 平川宗隆、ヒージャー天国 。(Munetaka Hirakawa, Hi-ja- Tengoku, Goat Heaven)

• 渡嘉敷綏宝、沖縄の山羊。(Suihō Tokashiki, Okinawa no Yagi, Okinawa’s Goats)

There are also numerous newspaper articles describing previous goat fighting events. I recommend the local papers, the Ryukyu Shimpo and the Okinawa Times. Happy reading and researching!