Description
Takanosato Toshihide (隆の里俊英), born in 1952 in the Aomori Prefecture (青森県) and deceased in November 2011, was the 59th yokozuna (横綱), the highest rank that can be achieved by a professional sumo wrestler. He began his career as an athlete practising football and judo (柔道). Nicknamed “Popeye” because of his brawny physique, he was one of the few wrestlers in his day to use weight training, which is now commonplace in sumo. Takanosato has reached the peak of his success around the age of thirty and his most challenging battle was the one against chronic diabetes, which marked him since childhood but that did not prevent him from becoming a champion.
Here we see him depicted in a fine woodblock print of large vertical format taken from the successful series “Polychrome Woodcuts of the Great Sumo Tournament” (大相撲錦絵), made in 1985 in a limited edition by the publisher Kyoto Hanga Institute (京都版画院) commissioned by Japan Sumo Association (日本相撲協会).
The print on Japanese washi paper (和紙), by the artist Kinoshita Daimon (木下大門), is in very good condition.
