Umeyuki Kiyomigawa

[KinchStalker]

Umeyuki Kiyomigawa (清美川梅之)

Profession: Wrestler, Trainer, Referee, Commentator (Color)
Real name: Umenosuke Sato (佐藤梅之助) [birth], Umenosuke Ohashi (大橋梅之助) [marriage]
Professional names: Umeyuki Kiyomigawa, Kiyomigawa, Togo Tani, Togo Shikuma
Life: 1/5/1917-10/13/1980
Born: Jumonji (now Yokote), Akita, Japan
Career: 1953-1979
Height/Weight: 183cm/94kg (6’0”/207lbs.)
Signature moves: unknown
Promotions: All Japan Pro Wrestling Association, Kokusai Pro Wrestling (Kimura), International Wrestling Enterprise, All Japan Womens’ Pro-Wrestling (as trainer)
Titles: Latin American Tag Team [Kokusai (Kimura)] (1x, w/Masahiko Kimura), NWA Tri-State Tag Team [NWA Tri-State] (2x, w/Chati Yokouchi)

Umeyuki Kiyomigawa was a puroresu pioneer who left Japan before the JWA cemented its monopoly. After a lengthy career as a journeyman in Europe and the States, he gave back to Japan as a talent booker for the IWE, and then as a joshi coach.

[Content warning: This profile covers the murder of a child.]

Umenosuke Sato joined the Isegahama sumo stable at 16 and debuted in 1934. He originally wrestled as Satsumagawa before a switch to Umeyuki Kiyomigawa in spring 1937. He was promoted to the juryo division the following year, and then reached the top division, makuuchi, in the spring tournament of 1940. The highlight of his career came two years later, when Kiyomigawa pulled an upset against the legendary yokozuna Futabayama and broke a 22-win streak. After a poor final performance in the only tournament of 1946, in which one of his losses came against Rikidozan, he retired. As he stated, his reason was to take over the ryotei restaurant of a patron whose adopted daughter he had married, and whose surname, Ohashi, he had taken as his own. That marriage did not last. Umenosuke moved back to his native Akita prefecture around 1948 to run a sawmill. After that closed, he moved to Osaka and found work at Otani Steelworks, whose sumo club he wrestled for in the early fifties.

On July 18, 1953, Kiyomigawa took part in Osaka’s first puroresu show, an outgrowth of the Kansai region’s juken (judo vs. boxing) revival. A charity event for victims of the Kitakyushu flood, this show at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium was headlined by a judo vs. sumo match, in which Kiyomigawa lost to judoka turned pro wrestler Toshio Yamaguchi. Less than three weeks after the JWA’s formation in Tokyo, this show led to the formation of puroresu’s second promotion. A translated Mainichi Shimbun article on the show found its way to a GI who saw an opportunity to “manage” his commanding officer in a wrestling match against Yamaguchi. When local yakuza boss Shojiro Matsuyama caught wind of the offer, which Yamaguchi had declined, he made a request to Mainichi to hold the show, and the All Japan Pro Wrestling Association was born. Alongside former Dewanoumi rikishi and Otani club teammate Hideyuki Nagasawa, Kiyomigawa became a charter member of Yamaguchi’s new promotion. He wrestled on the AJPWA’s pair of kickoff shows on December 8 and 9. Another pair of shows, sponsored by the Manaslu climbing team, took place on February 6 and 7, and the first of these shows was given puroresu’s first television broadcast by NHK Osaka. When the JWA began its first tour shortly after, Kiyomigawa, Yamaguchi, and Nagasawa took part. Umeyuki opened the JWA’s first show, wrestling Harold Toki to a time-limit draw in the Kuramae Kokugikan.

The AJPWA held its first tour that spring, promoted as a tournament between Japan and the American military. Kiyomigawa remained with the Association for most of its life. On the following January’s joint show with the JWA, Kiyomigawa lost his match, a tag with Nagasawa against Kokichi Endo & Yusuf Turk. Nine months later, Kiyomigawa was absent for All Japan’s October 7 show in Osaka. He had transferred to Masahiko Kimura's Kokusai Pro Wrestling, which held its first show in Osaka that December. Kimura's Kokusai was quickly disgraced when its “star” foreigner, discharged American serviceman Gorgeous Mac, was busted for jewel theft at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. On May 15, 1956, Kiyomigawa teamed up with Kimura and defeated Raul Romero & Yaqui Rocha for the fictitious Latin American Tag Team titles. (Kokusai was fifteen years ahead of the punch in bringing luchadors to Japan.) Two months later, on July 9, Kokusai held a joint show in Osaka with Toa Pro Wrestling, a small Zainichi Korean promotion that ran the market after All Japan folded. After Kiyomigawa won his match against Kuroda (we only have the surname), he and Kimura traveled to Mexico. There are records of a month’s worth of shows across August and September.

Kokusai’s remnants formed a new promotion, Asia Pro, that September. Kiyomigawa was listed in their official directories, but never returned to work a date for them (not that any show records survive). One of Asia Pro’s wrestlers, Shiro Tsukikage, later remarked that Kiyomigawa was unprepared to return to Japan due to “complicated circumstances”. Such circumstances soon became tragic. Kiyomigawa had a son with his ex-wife. Now twelve, the boy went missing on April 2, 1957, and his mother received a ransom letter two days later. As it turned out, this letter had been a cruel joke. The child was already dead. He had been lured from a public bathhouse to the home of a 26-year-old man who happened to be the son of a noted go player. When he refused to undress, the child was beaten to death and his body was dismembered, partially buried in the murderer’s yard and partially preserved in formaldehyde. Kiyomigawa learned the news from a friend.

There are no show records to trace the man until the early sixties. The only lead I have is a testimony from Mighty Inoue, which suggests that Kiyomigawa was in Brazil at some point in the following five years. As Inoue recalled, Kiyomigawa told him that he first met his future tag partner, Shinichi “Chati” Yokouchi, in Brazil. Yokouchi was twenty years his junior, and a failed businessman who tried to get training from him. After Kiyomigawa turned him down, Yokouchi was purportedly trained by Antonino Rocca, and found his own way to Europe in the early sixties.

Kiyomigawa (center) in Alphaville.

Kiyomigawa wrestled as Togo Tani in England for Australian promoter Paul Lincoln. A single show record on WrestlingData.com claims that Togo Tani, as well as Yokouchi, worked for Don Robinson in November 1961. British wrestling history site Wrestling Heritage claims that Lincoln himself had wrestled as Togo Tani at the start of the decade, whereas Kiyomigawa did not adopt the ring name until 1963. Less ambiguous are show records in Spain and France the following year, where Kiyomigawa wrestled under that old sumo name. At the absolute latest, it was by 1963 that he started teaming up with Yokouchi. In 1965, Kiyomigawa got one of the most interesting cinematic credits in all of puroresu: a bit part as a bouncer in Godard’s Alphaville. Two months after its release, he was in Germany, working his first known tournament for Gustl Kaiser. Kiyomigawa was approached by Klaus Kauroff, a truck driver and former amateur boxer, but turned him down. The following year, when Kiyomigawa won his second Hannover tournament, he agreed to take Kauroff under his wing.

Kiyomigawa (left) and Yokouchi gang up on Mike Marino, in a 1966 Royal Albert Hall match.

Kiyomigawa came to America in spring 1967. As Togo Shikuma, he worked in the Oklahoma territory for six months. He and Yokouchi must have been a well-honed act by then; the Wrestling Heritage bio alludes to a particularly dastardly heel performance at the Royal Albert Hall the previous year, against Mike Marino & Steve Viedor. The pan-shaped state rewarded them with the NWA Tri-State Tag Team title, which they won in Little Rock from Jack Brisco & Gorgeous George Jr. on May 9. While different markets in the territory billed different teams as champions, the duo held on to the belts in the canonical lineage until September, when they lost them to Danny Hodge & Skandor Akbar. Shikuma and Yokouchi won the titles back in a rematch one week later but lost them to Hodge & Akbar in early October. Apparently, that was when Kiyomigawa left Oklahoma. He never worked with Yokouchi again, and there was evidently no love lost. (Years later, he told Mighty Inoue that Yokouchi had moved to Brazil all those years before to evade a murder charge.) 

Kiyomigawa wrote to JWA wrestler-executive Michiaki Yoshimura, a fellow alumnus of Yamaguchi’s All Japan, to request a new Japanese tag partner. He did not get one, but somehow, he got enough money for a plane ticket back to Europe. Etsuji Koizumi speculated that this was due to the generosity of Giant Baba, who Kiyomigawa may have encountered in Los Angeles at the end of the year.[1] Kiyomigawa won a second Hannover tournament in 1969. Far more important to his legacy, though, was a connection he made that spring. In May, Kokusai Puroresu/International Wrestling Enterprise promoter Isao Yoshiwara came to Paris as Toyonobori & Strong Kobayashi won the new IWA World Tag Team titles. He hired Kiyomigawa as a talent booker, taking the place of Leeds promoter George de Relwyskow. This later cost the IWE a parallel relationship with Yokouchi, who briefly booked and wrestled for the promotion in the late stretch of the year. But it gave them a fresh crop of European talent, and it gave the young Andre the Giant his first work outside Europe. Kiyomigawa himself wrestled a single tour for Kokusai in 1970, and got its talent work in Europe, for the likes of Edmund Schober in Germany and Etienne Siry in France.

He dropped back in on the IWE for their first tour of 1973, working as a referee and color commentator. He won the Hannover tournament for a third and final time that year and returned to Japan in the late year for “rest and business”. On December 10, he appeared backstage at New Japan’s show at the Kuramae Kokugikan, where Antonio Inoki beat Johnny Powers for the NWF Heavyweight title. It is likely that Kiyomigawa was in on the secret negotiations to bring Kokusai’s disgruntled ace, Strong Kobayashi, to NJPW for a match. Like Kobayashi, he wrestled on the IWE’s first tour of the next year, and then cut ties. On March 19, 1974, Kiyomigawa was the impartial referee for Inoki and Kobayashi’s first match. He had wanted a job with New Japan, but Inoki had asked Hisashi Shinma not to hire any more performers. So Umenosuke only got the single appearance, for which he was paid ¥300,000. 

That June, Kiyomigawa joined All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling as a referee, coach, and commentator. He worked for the Matsunagas for four years, and trained Mach Fumiake, the Beauty Pair, and more. (According to Ryuma Go, who Umeyuki brought to France in 1973, Kiyomigawa had already been training French women to wrestle.) These four years are Umenosuke’s greatest contribution to the business, and native puroresu journalism has sadly underserved them. As the decade reached its last year, he left the company to help form a competing joshi promotion. New World Women's Pro-Wrestling folded after a month. On October 13, 1980, Kiyomigawa suffered a fatal stroke in Shizuoka.

FOOTNOTES

Spoiler

1. Koizumi’s theory is based on a clearly mixed-up story from the 2000 biography Kiyomigawa Monogatari, a self-published book based on the recollections of a friend from the wrestler’s hometown.

Edited October 26 by KinchStalker
added detail from a late-life interview with Ryuma Go