The years 1965 to 1973 were a rough time to be a trading card collector
in Japan because production was almost zero.
Menko cards had made a valiant production run from the 1930s until 1964
where millions of cards had been mass produced with thousands of different themes. Then, in almost a blink of an eye, menko
production stopped in 1964 except for a couple of dozen sets that were
sporadically printed over the course of the next 8 years. TV was thought to be the major contributor to
the death of the menko era, but in reality it was probably a combination of
increased economic prosperity in Japan, better and more sophisticated toys,
more focus on education and attention on making Japan a world leader again, and
the lack of a card collector base. In
the US, kids and adults alike were collecting and trading baseball, football, and basketball cards and they carried the demand with them to spur
production. However, in Japan, children
were almost solely the collecting base and when their attention turned to other
forms of entertainment the demand dried up.
Then, as almost
quickly as television had killed menko, television brought about the birth of
the mini card era in Japan in 1973. By
the early 1970s, color TVs were the standard and by 1975 almost 32 million
color TVs were in Japanese households.
Color TV allowed for some visual graphic and exciting shows. Television stations started broadcasting in
color a variety of diverse programs including popular dramas, anime, sumo,
baseball, and music. TV had turned into
the norm for daily life for people in Japan in the early 1970s. What this meant was that kids and adults
alike wanted to now collect cards of their favorite TV personality, anime
series, movie actor and sports hero. Hence
the mini card era was born in 1973.
No less than 6
companies jumped on board and started printing mini cards including
Yamakatsu(who had made menko a decade earlier), Osato, Calbee, and Amada. The size was standardized at approximately 2”
x 3” for most mini cards. Unfortunately,
only a handful of sumo card sets were printed in the 1970s. However, one of these sets was by Osato in
1975 and printed to represent the 1975 Haru Banzuke. Like most mini card sets it has 32 cards in
it because the card sheets were printed at the factory with 16 cards on them (4
cards x 4 cards). Some of the larger
mini card sets had 48 and 64 total cards.
These Osato sumo cards were issued in boxes of 50 packs (1 card per
pack) that cost 10 yen a pack.
These packs were made of brown paper and were stapled across the top with
two staples.
Also included in the
box were 3 “winner” cards that had a special gold stamp on the back. This stamp allowed the lucky kid to claim one of the 3 card albums included in the box
for free. These lucky winner cards were
packed separately in the box so the store owner knew which ones were the lucky
cards and could presumably control when each of the albums was given
away. These albums are made of thin
cardboard and have a sumo photo on the front with a picture or two of some of
the cards from the set on the back. Inside the album are 7 plastic, 2-pocket
pages to hold the cards. There are
currently 5 known different album designs.
The cards themselves are fairly standard. Of the 32 cards, 27 have a single color
background which is yellow, orange, pink, green, red or blue. The other 5 have a photographic background
which includes the audience at the Kokugikan.
The backs are printed in blue ink and indicate the rikishi’ s shikona
(with furigana above it), heya, birthplace, height, weight and favorite
technique. On the bottom of the cards is
a picture of a kimarite with the “white” rikishi as the winning rikishi and the
“black” rikishi as the losing rikishi.
The name of the kimarite is written next to the picture.
This set does have some important rikishi in it. First, the two reigning yokozuna of the
1970s: Kitanoumi and Wajima. It also has
up-andcoming Yokozuna Mienoumi (in 1975 he was a maegashira). Most importantly for the Western collector
and Hawaiian rikishi collector it has a card of Takamiyama when he was ranked
as a maegashira and 3 years after his Makuuchi yusho in 1972. Surprisingly, it doesn’ t have Wakamisugi
(Yokozuna Wakanohana) even though he was ranked as a sekiwake when this set was
printed.
This set is fairly easy to collect because of the amount of
cards on the market. The base cards are
fairly easy to find in auctions and usually show up once every several
months. More difficult to find are
“winner” cards and extremely difficult to find are uncancelled “winner” cards,
meaning that the store owner didn’ t mark out or cross out the winner stamp on
the back when a kid turned it in. Albums
are difficulty to find and unopened boxes of this set are nearly impossible to
come across.
