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Rossy:
I've been doing this for 50 years and I would like to keep expanding this culture.
It's the Reiwa era but I'm from the Showa era, and I'd like to sprinkle that classinc essence into the new era.

— Mr. HAKU / KOTATSU STUDIOS (@misterhakusan) April 15, 2024

On April 15, a press conference was held to formally announce the name and plans for Rossy Ogawa’s newest joshi wrestling promotion, Marigold. Many people had very normal reactions and the inaugural roster has already made some waves; like AWG and their continued refusal to put anyone on a contract, (anyone else remember how Natsumi Maki’s exit from Beginning Pro to TJPW went?) but the Rossy quote that piqued my interest was his intention to inject some “classic essence” from Showa era into this new era of joshi wrestling.

A quick explanation for those unfamiliar with the Japanese era system, an era starts the day that a new emperor ascends the throne, and the era ends with his reign. After an emperor’s death, he is posthumously named after his era: Emperor Hirohito is properly called Emperor Showa after his death, his father was Emperor Taisho (born Yoshihito). The current era, Reiwa, started when Naruhito became Emperor of Japan and we’re currently in the fifth year of Reiwa. Showa was the reign of Emperor Hirohito and is the longest era in Japanese history, starting in 1926 and ending in January 1989. I’m going to be mostly discussing the last two decades of Showa, the 1970s and 1980s, as they had the biggest boom periods for joshi wrestling and had some of the most important developments in the sport.

The history of professional wrestling in Japan began after WWII, playing off the emotions of Japanese citizens who had just witnessed massive destruction and were dealing with the occupation of their cities by America and its allies, the draw in early puro was Japanese hero vs evil white foreigner, who looked like many of the service men living on the new and intrusive military bases. Joshi wrestling would eventually get to the same Japan vs foreign villain matches as the men but the origins of joshi wrestling started in 1948 on US military bases with a comedy troupe of three siblings, Pan, Shopan, and Lily Igari, having worked boxing matches to entertain US forces. Many early joshi promotions took residence in night clubs because public gyms refused to rent their spaces for women’s wrestling, these origins made it so joshi wrestling had to fight popular opinion and convince the public that members of joshi wrestling promotions were having wrestling matches and should be treated like actual athletes. An international tour from Mildred Burke and her WWWA group helped draw interest in the sport, but it wasn’t sustained by domestic competition; there would be interest for female champions touring Japan, like Fabulous Moolah and other NWA competitors, but without television it was hard for joshi promotions to become popular like men’s promotions. Tokyo Channel 12 took the first step for joshi wrestling by broadcasting Chiyo Obata vs Fabulous Moolah in November 1968 and were rewarded with a tv rating of 22.4%, a number impressive enough that the main sponsor, Santen Pharmaceuticals, wanted a regular broadcast on Channel 12 staring Obata and in December that year joshi wrestling had a regular spot on broadcast television with the Women’s Wrestling Broadcast: World Championship Series airing on Thursday nights from 7:30-8:00 pm. And yet, despite respectable ratings across regional stations, there were calls to the Tokyo Channel 12 office complaining that something as vulgar as women’s wrestling was shown at a time when families and children could see it. So, if women wrestling was still considered inappropriate in the late 1960s how do we get to AJW landing on Fuji TV by 1975?

Essence 1: Sing Your Song

The most important essence of Showa era joshi wrestling was singing. By making joshi wrestlers appear more like entertainment idols and professional singers, Fuji TV and AJW were able to change public perception and make the sport palatable to new audiences. After Mach Fumiake was runner up in the national singing competition, Star Tanjou, (this competition show would launch the careers of singers like Momoe Yamaguchi and Pink Lady) she had decided to pursue a career in golf but seeing a recruitment poster for AJW while at the hair salon helped change the fate of an entire industry. Mach Fumiake’s wrestling debut in 1974 was aired on Nippon TV, the home of Star Tanjou, and they would have late-night broadcasts of AJW shows featuring Mach Fumiake, but while Nippon TV were asleep at the wheel Fuji TV knocked on AJW’s door and offered them a deal they felt could benefit both parties. Fuji TV was in need for programming that could attract housewives and their children, and by January 1975 a certain young wrestler was making serious waves in the entertainment world with her beauty, charisma, and unusual job as a pro wrestler. Celebrity magazines, variety shows, and late night tv were abuzz with Mach Fumiake, Fuji TV approached AJW with a tv deal that would have AJW be regularly broadcast on the national TV station under certain conditions; the wrestlers would need to get spectacular entrance gear to help separate them from other joshi wrestlers, singing would have to be featured on every broadcast, and the wrestlers would have to keep up the new squeaky clean image crafted by Fuji TV. The Three Nos were already in place at AJW and had existed before from the older Toyo Joshi Pro, but now they held more importance with a landmark tv deal at stake. Not only had Mach Fumiake changed what people thought joshi wrestling was, she also became a blueprint for what a joshi wrestling star would look and act like. These were no longer athletes struggling to be seen as legitimate pro wrestlers, AJW was now home to wrestling idols who were role models to young girls and an ideal picture of youth for concerned parents.

Essence 2: DxDxD

In April 1975 Fuji TV started broadcasting AJW shows with Mach Fumiake as their star. Mach Fumiake brought joshi wrestling to the public and made it family-friendly entertainment, she made being a pro wrestler seem cool and a gateway to stardom. If Mach Fumiake made the idea of being a pro wrestler seem attractive, then Beauty Pair made young girls across Japan want to become like their idols and start wrestling. Beauty Pair were introduced to AJW audiences in February 1976 and released their debut single, Kakemeguru Seishun, in November that year. An important difference between Mach’s music and Beauty Pair’s was that Mach sang ballads and kayokyoko that was popular with a wide range of ages, Beauty Pair were like their contemporaries, Pink Lady and Candies, and added snappy choreography and faster tempos to their music that was targeted towards younger music fans who were more likely to be listening to music featuring teeny boppers, funk, disco, and rock bands. Youth was a common theme in Beauty Pair songs and was everywhere in their marketing. Young ages of the stars of AJW would create a unique connection between the wrestlers and their fans. Although Beauty Pair’s choreography was nowhere near the speed and complexity of Pink Lady’s, nor could you call Maki or Jackie good singers, it didn’t matter when fans kept buying albums and going to Beauty Pair concerts. Beauty Pair mania inspired a generation of girls to want to become wrestlers, so many applied to AJW that they created an actual audition process and started having pro-tests to determine when rookies were ready to debut. The dramatic changes to how AJW operated due to the Beauty Pair boom meant that they and Fuji TV were ready for when the next tag team would take off, they tried first with the Dynamite Gals, but the planets aligned to make the Crush Gals one of the biggest acts in Japanese wrestling history. Everything that Beauty Pair did the Crush Gals did on a higher level, both members could sing, they performed more complex choreography, they were better wrestlers, and with the bonus of Japan’s economy reaching its apex, Crush Gals mania took over pop culture. They got AJW back to a primetime slot on Fuji TV while also successfully making Crush Gal fans into wrestling fans, but Crush Gals and Beauty Pair didn’t become popular tag teams by themselves.

Essence 3: Lucifer

During Mach Fumiake’s time in AJW the company made a change in booking its champions, after Mach won the WWWA title in 1975 only three foreigners would hold the title, a significant shift from having the main title go back and forth between the Japanese roster and whichever foreigners were on tour that month. In 1975 the first attempt at a monster heel was made with the 180cm Yukari Lynch teaming with foreigners to fight Mach Fumiake and a very early Beauty Pair, but Yukari left wrestling within a year. The solution to the void left by Yukari was to create a tag team whose sole purpose was to terrorize Beauty Pair, and thus the team of Yumi Ikeshita and Shinobu Aso was created and named Black Pair. Black Pair would cheat and use weapons, creating scenes of havoc never seen by the new joshi wrestling audience. If the young Beauty Pair fans were uninterested in wrestling in the beginning, they were eventually drawn in by the drama of seeing the baby faces in peril. The first iteration of Black Pair was good, but they become great innovators once Mami Kumano replaces Shinobu Aso in 1978 after the latter leaves the company and joins a new joshi wrestling promotion. Mami Kumano easily filled in the gap and the new Black Pair became even meaner, Mami Kumano would use scissors in her matches and had a signature spot of grabbing her opponents in a chokehold and swinging them side to side off the apron; these two spots and more would be adopted by Black Squadron rookies, Dump Matsumoto and Crane Yu. Dump Matsumoto and Crane Yu would become the new top monster heels of the company by the mid-1980s and with the Atrocious Alliance, they took the sport to unknown heights with bloody brawls and nonstop violence. Officiating could do nothing to stop the Atrocious Alliance from wreaking havoc against the Crush Gals and their friends. The Atrocious Alliance became one of the most iconic factions of Japanese wrestling and their leader was one of the best heels in the history of the sport, no one else could do it like Dump Matsumoto.

From Now On

Rossy Ogawa got his start in wrestling as a ringside photographer in 1975 and by the end of Crush Gals he was the errand man for the Matsunaga Brothers and taking the lead in the official media for AJW, like being Editor-in-Chief for Ring Star Magazine and directing some of the Ring Star promo videos. Ogawa doesn’t get major office power until Heisei and seeing what Rossy Ogawa led promotions have looked like, they’ve never really had any essence of Showa joshi wrestling. They’ve been continuations of what early Heisei joshi wrestling looked like which would make sense since that’s when he starts to make major decisions in AJW and creates Arsion. Based on what Fumi Saito has said, it seems like the major characteristics of Showa joshi wrestling isn’t what Ogawa is after because that’s when it wasn’t popular with male wrestling fans. Mach Fumiake was popular with a mixed audience, but she was popular along side other celebrities and Giulia isn’t joshing around with Travis Japan.

All images used in this post are from my personal collection