The origin of the Chabo is unknown. Mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests that it, and all other Japanese breeds of ornamental chicken, derived through selective breeding from fighting chickens, the ancestors of the modern Shamo breeds.^[8]: 20 The earliest recognisable depiction of a Chabo in Japanese art dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century; a short-legged chicken with tall upright tail shown in the Portrait of Jacoba Maria van Wassenaer by Jan Steen, painted in about 1660, is believed to be a Chabo.^[9]: 171

Japan was effectively closed to all foreign trade from 1636 until about the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868.^[9]: 171 The first documented exports of the Chabo to Europe and the United States began at about this time.^[9]: 172 The Japanese Bantam apparently reached the United Kingdom in the 1860s; it was not included in the first British poultry standard of William Tegetmeier in 1865, but was described in his The Poultry Book in 1867.^{[9]: 174 [10][11]: 252} A breed society, the Japanese Bantam Club, was formed during the Crystal Palace Poultry Show of 1912.^[9]: 174

In 1937 an international breed club – the International Chabo Bantam Club – was formed at a meeting in Switzerland.^[9]: 172

The Japanese bantam has very short legs.^[12]: 142 This trait is caused by the creeper gene, Cp, which displays the standard behaviour of recessive lethal alleles:^[13]; when short-legged birds are bred, 25% of the embryos are homozygous for the lethal allele, and die in shell; 50% are heterozygous, and develop into short-legged birds; the remaining 25% are homozygous for the non-lethal allele, and develop longer legs, making them unsuitable for showing. Long-legged birds bred to each other can not produce short-legged offspring.^[13]

In western countries there are many colour varieties of the Japanese Bantam. The Entente Européenne lists forty-two, of which twenty-three are recognised, with standardised colours including birchen grey, black, black mottled, black-tailed buff, black-tailed white, blue, blue mottled, blue-red, brown-red, buff Columbian, cuckoo, dark grey, golden duckwing, grey, lavender, Miller's grey, partridge, red, red mottled, silver-grey, tri-coloured, wheaten and white.^[5] The American Poultry Association lists nine colours.^[4]: 4 There are also frizzle-feathered^[3], Silkie-feathered and hen-feathered variations, though not in all colours.^[13][14]

In Japan a number of types are recognised. These include the Okina Chabo, which is bearded; two varieties of Higo-Chabo, the Dorama and Taikan, both with an unusually large comb (the Taikan has a normal Chabo tail, that of the Dorama is shorter); and the Shinguro Chabo or black-skinned black, which is entirely black, with black skin like that of a Silkie.^[13]