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Here is a career-long professional who had started out as a Sumo wrestler before the War, excelled in that art during the War, and turned to professional wrestling after it. In 1953 he featured on the first professional wrestling bill run by a Japanese promoter. His opponent was Toshio Yamaguchi, but the pair of adversaries would go on to found the All Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance together in partnership.
Yet the name Togo Tani was unknown beyond our shores. He was known in all countries but Britain by the name Umenosuke Kiyomigawa or usually, sumo-style, using only the surname.
1963 saw Togo Tani wrestling on Paul Lincoln bills, often in partnership with another Japanese wrestler, Chati Yakouchi. Here another little can of worms presents itself. The name Togo Tani was already familiar to some fans of independent promoters’ shows, but this was not Umeyuki Kiyomigawa. Togo Tani had appeared on British posters around 1960. The man masquerading as a Japanese villain at that time was promoter Paul Lincoln, often alongside tag partner Joe D’Orazio, or Kito Tani as he was known. Can it be that Umeyuki Kiyomigawa took his more manageable name for British tongues from a tag pairing several years before he had wrestled in Britain?
For the first six months of 1964 Tani joined the roster of Lincoln regulars and went into nightly battle with Al Hayes, Ray Hunter, Mike Marino, Don Stedman and the rest. For the remainder of 1964 and most of 1965 fans of France, Spain, Austria and Germany enjoyed Togo Tani, or Kiyomigawa as they knew him.
On his return to Britain in the autumn of 1965 there was a change of allegiance and Togo Tani and Chati Yakouchi started working for Joint Promotions.
In June 1966 came that most famous of tag bouts on wrestling’s Night of Nights when, partnered by Chati Yokouchi, the villainous pair caused outrage with their evil tactics against Steve Viedor and Mike Marino at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Clearly well rated within the business, Togo Tani’s photograph appeared on the cover of The Wrestler magazine.
Leaving British shores in 1967, by now fifty years old, he spent much of the following years in Germany. Through his career he wrestled his way around the world, settled for some little while in South America, He didn’t return to Japan until 1970, 14 years after he had left. In Spain he trained Klaus Kauroff for the professional ring. His Spanish had become so good that the story even got out that he wasn’t Japanese but Peruvian!
In the modern era he would tag alongside Shozo Kobayashi and would referee big box office bouts featuring the great Antonio Inoki in the 1970s. The wanderlust took hold of him again, and he returned to Germany to feud with Axel Dieter in 1973, and he frequently tagged alongside Le Gland Vladimir. Towards the end of his life he tried to set up a Women’s Wrestling promotion in Japan.
Belatedly we can state that it is no wonder Togo Tani was able to dovetail so well into the wealth of talent in mid-sixties British rings, now that we are able to put this fuller, but no doubt still woefully inadequate, biography together. The man did it all! We hope our Japanese visitors to the Wrestling Heritage site will get in touch with more information on one of the all-time greats.
Togo Tani was born 5th January, 1917 and died 13th October, 1980.
Page added 06/10/2022
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