An Apology
I have an apology to make: I missed a cartoon. And it’s significant because it’s the first surviving depiction of sumo wrestling. I thought that was “Yoshichiro Salutes” from 1933, but a discussion with Schottenjager of the wonderful Midnight Sumo community set me right.
“Doubutsu Sumo Taikai” / “Animal Sumo Tournament” (Unknown studio, 1931) is a 52-second cartoon that appears to be a fragment of a larger, multi-sport effort. If I had to guess, I’d say it was edited out of “Doubutsu Olympic Taikai”, from Yokohama Cinema in 1928. The art and animal animation style look very similar. But I don’t know that for sure.
“Animal Sumo Tournament”
A tanuki shows a banner announcing the event, and then a monkey leaps into the ring and wrecks everyone. A pelican, a hare, a goat and a pig gets their butts handed to them in short order, although I’m pretty sure that the hare-pull wouldn’t be legal in modern sumo. Sorry.
When a bear shows up, the cartoon gets historically interesting. The monkey drinks some power-water, and we see the canopy and poles that they’re fighting under, which are all completly real and accurate. Someone making this genuinely cared about the sport.
Anyway: the monkey still wins but the bear makes a proper fight of it, and then an elephant gives the monkey a huge trophy with a striking resemblance to the Emperor’s Cup, which has been awarded to tournament champions since 1925.
This was a fun little watch. There’s definitely material missing, perhaps additional bouts or more characterisation of the bear or monkey. If that’s the case, this could easily have made it out to five minutes or so. But it wasn’t. If you’re interested in sumo and you haven’t already seen this, it’s worth your time.
FIN
That’s all I wanted to say for this one. Many thanks again to Schottenjager and the people at Midnight Sumo. May your chickens always be bobbled, he in-joked.
The image of the Emperor’s Cup is by FourTildes, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.