The 3 Japanese Sacred Treasures of the 1960s and the End of the Golden Age of Menko

       Browsing the internet, you can find numerous articles and tidbits of information regarding menko and the impact the game the game had on Japanese children.  The history of menko from the late 1800s to the mid-1960s is well documented in various books, magazines, and internet sources.  However, its eighty year run as one of the most popular children's game often doesn't focus on the abrupt ending in the mid 1960s.  Menko survived the devastating Kanto earthquake of 1923.  Menko survived the World War II paper drives.  Menko even survived the extreme poverty and rebuilding of Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  However, in the mid-1960s menko could not survive the 3 Japanese Sacred Treasures.

      The 3 Treasures I am referring to are the television, electric washing machine, and electric refrigerator.  These treasures rapidly enhanced the standard of living in Japan and ushered in the era of mass consumerism.  Televisions in homes now offered a distraction to kids who otherwise might be playing menko with their friends.  The pressure of parents on Japanese children to advance themselves in society (basically go out and earn these three treasures} through studying more and hard work also decreased time to play menko.  Playing menko was often seen as a hindrance to advancing japan and children were spending all their extra time.

   The last sumo menko set of the golden era was the 1964 Marusho Tawara 5 set.  This set was not extraordinary at all and a sad end.  In fact, this set was a rehash of several other sets Marusho had done earlier in the 1950s.  At this point, menko profits were likely all dried up and they were attempting to crease a set with as little investment as possible.  The total number of menko in this set is likely between 30-50.  It does, however, contain 5 Yokozuna (Kashiwado, Taiho, Tochinoumi, Sadanoyama, Tamanoumi) at various stages in their career.

Each menko can have several of the approximately 10 different back designs and each of those back designs can be found in different colors of ink making the master checklist quite large.  There are 5 different types of backs: Red Ink, Blue Ink, Grey Ink, Light Green Ink, and Dark Green Ink.

There are a lot of parallels to card collecting in America these days.  Lots of other distractions that pull kids away from card collecting.  What happens when our generation of older collectors goes away?  I personally don't think enough of a new generation has been created and we'll see another dramatic cut in trading card production in the next 10-20 years.