Saturday, March 21, 2020

1960s Japanese Yukata Bolt & Card - Yokozuna Taiho

In the past year or so, I have been very enamored with these bolts of indigo yukata material with photo cards attached to them from the 1960s.  Athletes, actors, singers, kabuki stars....they all adorned brilliant blue/indigo yukata and promoted many different styles from many different companies.  Right now I have a close to 30 of these bolts in my collection and there is something soothing and mystic about the patterns.  This particular bolt and card are made by the Tokyo Yukata Company (東京ゆかた) and feature a card of the Dai-Yokozuna Taiho attached to a neat "shell" patterned bolt.  The card has the number "110" on it.  I also own #103 and #113 with different wrestlers so it appears that this was a run of sumo cards in a larger group of bolts.  Would be neat to know if Tokyo Yukata made hundreds of other bolts....I'm always on the lookout.

Folded up, these bolts measure about 13" long, 6" wide and about 1.5" thick. 



Please stay safe out there with this ever rapidly-changing health environment!  Sayonara!

10 comments:

  1. Interesting concept. Did the athletes, actors, etc. actually promote the yukata companies as well? (i.e., "Dai-Yokozuna Taiho prefers fabric from the Tokyo Yukata Company")

    I can imagine sales increasing if they did!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It seems like they did promote the companies, like a spokesperson. Wonder how much they got paid. So far, though, I have yet to see the same pattern or material. Almost like they made one offs of this stuff...or really low manufacturing quantities.

      Delete
  2. I can't remember if you ever showed how you're storing these, but if you haven't already done so, it would be kind of interesting to see.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They stack fairly well so I have about 20 or so piled on my box shelf. I own some rolled up material with cards attached as well so those are harder to stack. At some point I am going to run out of room.

      Delete
  3. These are so flippin' awesome! The way these cards were distributed are so unique. Anyways... hope you're enjoying the extra family time at home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is definitely one of the more interesting ways to distribute cards for sure. Teleworking is cool for now, but could get stressful here at some point.

      Delete
    2. Keep your head up bud... and I hope you're able to find some free time with either family or cards. This weekend was the first time I spent some quality time sorting... and it surprisingly helped pass the time.

      Delete
    3. That sounds glorious! You too, hang in there.

      Delete
  4. Nice one, I like seeing the posts about these since they are so unique to Sumo!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have a good handful of baseball players as well! Might try and do a post about them at some point. Definitely not captured in Engel’s book.

      Delete