Although the Japanese reflexive "zibun" can be bound both locally and across clause boundaries, the third-person pronoun "kare" cannot take a local antecedent. These are properties that children need to learn about their language, but we show that the direct evidence of the binding possibilities of "zibun" is sparse and the evidence of "kare" is absent in speech to children, leading us to ask about children's knowledge. We show that children, unlike adults, incorrectly reject the long-distance antecedent for "zibun," and while being able to access this antecedent for a non-local pronoun "kare," they consistently reject the local antecedent for this pronoun. These results suggest that children's lack of matrix readings for "zibun" is not due to their understanding of discourse context but the properties of their language understanding.