It Turns Out...Golf Holes-In-One and Japanese Sumo Wrestling

It turns out that getting a hole in one in golf is actually quite hard and if you are a sumo wrestler it is even harder.  Over 50 years ago the former Yokozuna Tochinishiki got one and has since been the first, and only, active or retired sumo wrestler to do so.  How hard is it to get a hole in one?  Well, according to the U.S. National Hole-In-One Registry it is about 1:12000 for an average player....so given that a course has about 3-4 Par 3s, you would need to play about 3500 rounds of golf before you sink one.  American baseball has seen numerous holes-in-one by active and former players: Mike Maddux, Luke Hudson, and Brian Matusz to name a few.  Football's legendary Jan Stenerud and Peyton Manning have both hit one.  Even the NBA's future HOFer Steph Curry has made one.

Here is Yokozuna Tochnishiki's 1957 Tsuki 8-9-10 menko that is also extremely rare...like hitting a hole-in-one.  Fewer than 10 of these menko are known to exist...

Thanks for stopping by and sayonara!

Mistakes Were Made - 1960 Doyusha Fusa 7: Type 2 (BC603-2)

Mistakes on Japanese cards are fairly rare.  Mistakes on vintage Japanese cards are even more rare with only a handful of known examples.  With the wild west of production from the 1930s to the 1960s, I am surprised there wasn't a ton more.  And with hundreds of sets and hundreds of thousands of menko and cards being produced, this is quite the astounding feat.  However, one set that got it wrong was the BC603-2: 1960 Doyusha Fusa -Type 2 Set.  The front of the menko look normal, but upon turning them over it quickly becomes apparent that someone at the Doyusha factory had a bad day.  They got the wrong backs...meaning the name and statistics for another wrestler accidently appear on the menko.  Instead of redoing the layout and reprinting, Doyusha overlaid a fan with the wrestler's correct name.  The Type 2 set is printed on grey paper stock and is the set that contains the error.  The Type 1s all appear correct and were printed on tan paper stock leading me to believe that either A) the Type 1s were printed later after they were all corrected, or B) the Type 2s were printed at another factory and corrected locally.  Either way, it makes for an interesting piece of Japanese menko history.

I hope every one has a great weekend and sayonara!

Post #300! Keeping it Simple!

Well, I just hit my 300th post!  Hard to believe that I had 300 different things to write about and I want to thank all my readers out there for sticking with me.  Looking forward to another 300.

I'm going to keep today simple.  A fellow sumo enthusiast sent me this card of hers that she had with a bunch of other items...she knew it would go to a good home.  Boy was she right!  Although this BC561: 1956 Marusan Jyunishi Nagai 3-4-6 set is pretty common and menko pop up all the time, surprisingly I did not have this particular menko of then Maegashira Tamanoumi.  It is not in perfect shape and well-loved but that is exactly how I like them!

Tamanoumi competed in 4 different decades and was a staple on the banzuke throughout his career.  To top it off, he won the November 1957 championship when he was ranked only at Maegashira 14 with a perfect 15-0 record; a record that even some yokozuna aren't able to accomplish.

Stay safe out there and thanks for dropping by for a quick sumo menko tidbit!

The Mystery Deepens - Merging 2 1950s Sumo Wreslting Menko Sets

My quest to catalogue every sumo menko and card produced and publish my findings has been driving me over the past ~20 years.  These days discovering news sets is few and far between, but this past month I was able to solve a part of a "mystery" that has been bugging me for a while.  The BC598: 1959 Trophy 6 set always stood out as a loner.  These five trophy BC-series menko cards seemed out of place because they only depicted the trophy hardware, never wrestlers.  But I could never pinpoint where they belonged so I gave them their own catalogue number and set name until I could find out.  However, I recently discovered an uncut pair of BC5710: 1957 Yamakatsu Gyoji 5 menko that had both a BC598 and BC5710 on it.  Mystery solved or so it seems.  For some reason I never caught on that on the back of the trophy cards, they had the years associated with the last 8 winners of the trophy that was depicted on the front.  When do the years end?  In the middle of 1958.  So I had the wrong year on both of these sets.  So now I will merge both of these sets and recatalogue them being from 1958, but the question remains, why did Yamakatsu issue these difficult-to-find trophy cards as well as give them a 6-digit Fighting number instead of 5 digits like the rest of their set counterparts?  Were they used for some other prize?  The mystery deepens....

1961 Maruta Sumo Menko (BC612) - Tsunkoro Daisuke TV Drama

From 1961, Fuji Television aired a showed about a young boy from the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and his trials and tribulations trying to make it big in the world of sumo.  The show was somewhat popular in part fueled by the guest appearances from actual sumo wrestlers.  Capitalizing on the success of the show, Maruta produced a set of BC-series menko depicting various scenes from the show and what appears to be some behind the scenes views.  It is unknown how many of these menko there are, but likely somewhere around 32....needless to say they are extremely difficult to find.  I have accumulated 3 over the years and fortunately have one of Yokozuna Wakanohana (left side below).  Menkonohako has some great images of more of the menko including the one below of Daisuke getting some encouragement from his stablemaster.  There were manga printed to accompany the show as well.  I'd love to land a full set of these someday!

Image courtesy of http://menkonohako.web.fc2.com/untitled.htm58.htm

1959/1960 Maruichi Sagari 7 Sets (BC595/BC604)

Type 1: White Border

Type 2: No Border

Anyone watching the Hatsu Tournament?  It appears Yokozuna Hakuho is making another run at a championship!

This set(s) is one of the main reasons I love to collect, catalog, and checklist new sumo menko and cards.  I thought I had the set(s) figured out and then I dig up new information and found additional menko that proved my original research wrong.  I wish I could tell you that I have it all squared away in this blog, but I'll need to spend several hours now revisiting these sets and come up with new checklists which I'll post here and get in my next book edition.  I picked up this prize sheet several years ago and tucked it away, but dug it out again recently to double check I had my checklist up to date and to take a picture for reference.  Originally I had this set as the 1959 Maruichi Sagari 7 Set (BC595) (Note:  I believe Engel incorrectly lists these as a Maruya sets) with two types (with and without borders).  As I was reviewing the checklist with this prize sheet I noticed that some of the wrestler's fighting names (shikona) had changed and that the top prizes on this sheet were of only Kashiwado and Taiho who didn't really become popular until 1960 and beyond.  Then I noticed subtle differences between the Type 1: White Border menko and Type 2: No Border menko in terms of who is represented in each set indicating different release dates.  I remember Engel talking about border and borderless sets being released in different years so I went back and double check and he does mention borderless being issued a year earlier than bordered sets.  This very well may be the case here and I am thinking the Type 2 set is actually from 1959 and the Type 1 is from 1960.  (A great example of how Japanese sumo and baseball menko research helps and verifies each other)  I also translated what was at the top of this prize sheet and it has written "丸一新版相撲面子集" which translates as "Maruichi New Edition Sumo Menko Collection".  I take this as meaning an updated and new release of a previous edition.

This prize sheet is what you typically would see hanging up in the dagashiya.  It's approximately 24"x 36" and has 1/2/3 prize levels.  The 1st-level prize menko are large 8" x 11" and there are 3 of those.  The 2nd-level prize menko are six uncut sheets of 4 menko.  The 3rd-level prize menko are 16 uncut sheets of 2 menko.  In a 100 枚 taba pack that means almost a 1-in-4 chance of winning!  As with most prize sheets, the paper is very thin and starting to deteriorate.  Hopefully I can figure out how to preserve these someday, but at least the glue used to hold the menko on the sheet is still holding strong.

  These menko are very common to find in auctions probably because they were released so late in the menko boom and there was likely a lot of deadstock left over in dagashiya.  The set(s) show the rikishi in various poses and action shots agains a mostly solid background or on the dohyo and measure approximately 1.75" x 3.0".  Backs are printed in a blue ink and have the "Gu-Choki-Pa" mark in a circle at the top with the shikona down the middle and the 7-digit Fighting Number along the bottom.  The left column contains the rikishi's height and weight in kiograms and centimeters and the right column has the rikishi's prefectural birthplace and heya information.

1957 Tsuki 8-9-10 (BC5711)

  First, I want to thank the Japanese baseball card guys at their blogs for giving me a shoutout and a link to my blog here. Also, wanted to say thanks for the kind words and support from the folks that have already checked the site out. I've been poking away at trying to add new content on each series of menko you see on the left. That will be a work in progress for a while I think. This is my first post from my iPhone so we'll see how it goes. Definitely easier to do on my PC, but so far so good here.

   This set is one that had actually eluded me with "large" quantities of menko to build a good checklist off of until last year when I happened upon an small lot of them for auction. Then just a few months ago I discovered this gem of an uncut sheet.   For those that know me, I am a sucker for unopened boxes, uncut sheets, taba packs, and prize display sheets so I knew I had to have this one.  This set is the 1957 Tsuki 8-9-10 (BC5710) and is a color bromide menko series set. As you can see from the photos there are a variety of photos of the rikishi from them standing in there keshi-mawashi to photos of a bout to candid photos...all for the most part against a solid color background. The manufacturer of this set is unknown at the moment and we won't know until a taba pack or prize sheet is discovered. Backs are printed on grey cardboard stock of fairly good quality with blue ink.  There is an image of a gunbai or banzuke board depending on the menko and each menko has a unique back. The winner stamp on these is red and very difficult to find one with the stamp.  The checklist is probably close to complete around 20-30 menko, but it does contain all 4 Yokozuna of the era.  If you come across some of these pick them up as they are extremely rare to find.