1983-1 Japanese Sumo Wrestling Playing Card Set

I just did a video of this 1981-3 Japanese Sumo Wrestling Playing Trump Card Set over on my YouTube channel, but wanted to highlight a few more details here.  The Japanese word for playing cards is Trump or トランプ.  I'm sure there is a background on why it is called "trump"...probably was borrowed from another language.

I really like these trump sets as they feature a lot of wrestlers that really only ever got cards in these sets.  A brief history...these continued to be printed today, but started in 1973.  They usually came out one set per year (except in 2012 when the big match-fixing scandal hit sumo and in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), but at the height of sumo's popularity in the early 1990s they were cranking out 3 sets per year.  These sets were only available at the kokugikan and souvenir shops.

This particular 1983-1 set was printed in March 1983 and has some notable rikishi in the set: the dai-yokozuna Chiyonofuji as the King Diamonds, the great Yokozuna Kitanoumi as the King of Hearts, Yokozuna Takanosato ranked as an Ozeki as Queen of Spades, the young Asashifuji ranked as a Maegashira before he became Yokozuna later on in the 1980s. and of course Takamiyama who seemed like would keep competing forever.  There was a 1983-2 set made in September of that year that included an extra Queen of Clubs that showed Takanosato as a recently promoted Yokozuna...this was done to hold people over until the following year when a whole new set could be printed.

I haven't been able to research much about who manufactured these sets, but the case does say "Alaska Playing Card Company"...not sure if they made just the plastic storage cases or the whole sets.  A brief search on Google doesn't yield anything.  

Thanks for tuning in and certainly appreciate all the support over the years!