The Princess Road
Flupke's Month in Wrestling: November 2022 (Part One)
Front Matter
We’re doing things a little differently this month. Other writing commitments have left me unable to keep up with my usual newsletter output, so I’ve handed over the reins to a bunch of other writers I admire. In this first of three posts, George Twigg lays down the definitive answer to a question I’ve asked myself many times before: is Tokyo Joshi Pro King’s Road?
Come back tomorrow for more!
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写真家さん、ここにイメージが写すことが許可しなければ聞いて下さって私は大至急除きます (ツイターの @oystersearrings です)。ありがとうございます！
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Every wrestling promotion, consciously or not, exists on a continuum between embracing and rejecting its own past, and that of the sport as a whole. While some companies have forged boom periods through a wholesale rejection of their history (Attitude Era WWF), casting off the shackles of time’s burden can fall flat if fans don’t find the new offering compelling (New Generation WWF). Hence, even while seeking to innovate and introduce new faces, most promotions like to position themselves within a grand tradition, thereby conferring legitimacy (in and out of kayfabe) on their product.
One way of doing this is to implicitly or explicitly position your federation as a spiritual successor to a much-loved company: through sharing a figurehead (AJW’s Chigusa Nagayo forming GAEA and later Marvelous, or Genichiro Tenryu leading SWS, WAR and finally Tenryu Project); sharing a philosophy (the shoot style fed UWF giving rise to UWFI, RINGS and PWFG, all of which to some extent claimed to be of a piece with their predecessor); or filing the serial numbers off because the parent company changed and the IP consequently needed to as well (WNC becoming SMASH, JWP becoming Pure-J). All of which is interesting, but what’s even more fascinating is when a company manages to capture something of the essence of a past that, on the surface, it doesn’t resemble at all.
At which point I would like to ask you a question: who or what is the spiritual successor to 90s AJPW, the era considered by many people – not least tastemaker extraordinaire Dave Meltzer – to be when the artform of pro wrestling reached its zenith? The five-star matches, the Four Pillars, the epic wars at the Nippon Budokan, and above all the philosophy that underpinned it all: the King’s Road? Is it NJPW, whose mix of big production values and grandiose workrate epics has seen it become the canvas for Uncle Dave’s highest praise? Is it NOAH, the office literally founded by disgruntled All Japan wrestlers in the year 2000? Is it, heaven forfend, present-day AJPW?
It’s none of those. It’s Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling.
Yes, TJPW. The promotion with the catgirl, and the trainspotter who sings her opponents to sleep, and the woman who dresses up like a superhero then rides her bike into a stack of chairs, and the other catgirl who had to change her gimmick when she signed because they already had a catgirl. That cutesy, cuddly carnival of joy and pleasant vibes captures the King’s Road better than anyone else in Japan.
It might seem counterintuitive, but only if you make the same category error many Western fans make when they talk about “strong style”; which, via linguistic slippage, seems to have become regarded as coterminous with stiffness. In fact, “strong style” is little more than a marketing technique dreamed up by Antonio Inoki to sell New Japan Pro Wrestling (and himself, of course).[1] Though his matches against martial artists contained hard strikes and rough throws, these were a means to an end rather than a purely aesthetic choice. By toughing it out and eventually triumphing, Inoki was able get across the idea that pro wrestling is literally “a strong style”.
Similarly, though the main event scene in 90s AJPW is associated with lengthy bouts, bone-jarring intensity and plentiful head drops, those were a means to an end too. If danger was all it took to pave the King’s Road, you may as well add every over-ambitious indie ladder match to the canon. The King’s Road should instead be viewed as a company-wide storyline that spanned the whole of the 90s and centred on a handful of AJPW’s top stars as they constantly pushed each other to new heights in ever-more violent matches. All those head drops were not just done to thrill the crowd, they were there to illustrate an escalation from previous encounters. One example is Mitsuharu Misawa performing his super finisher, the Tiger Driver ‘91, on Toshiaki Kawada for the first time in their famous 6/3/94 match because he can no longer put away the challenger with his standard repertoire, but really the entire match illustrates the point well. It didn’t work just because of the moves, it worked because it was Mitsuharu Misawa and Toshiaki Kawada doing them, with all the attendant context of their rivalry and relationship. I’m sure two modern-day wrestlers could do a shot-for-shot remake of 6/3/94, but without the King’s Road it’d be mechanically impressive and nothing more.
To zero in on exactly why TJPW can be said to have constructed its own King’s Road in recent years, I want to consider two aspects it shares with AJPW’s golden age: the roster’s continuous improvement and its stratified hierarchy. Or, in Japanese, the pleasingly similar kaizen and kaisou.
Kaizen 改善
Kaizen, from the kanji meaning “change” or “renewal” and the kanji meaning “morally good” or “virtuous”, means “improvement” in a general sense, but in management theory it specifically means a philosophy focused on continuous improvement: for example, by raising efficiency, cutting waste and maintaining high employee morale. Your mileage may vary on how much you believe this to be a good thing – you can appreciate how an ethos of continuous improvement can easily become an exhortation to “do more with less”, a mantra with which my fellow NHS workers will be more than familiar – but for our purposes it’s a useful lens through which to view the King’s Road, seeing as we have characterised it not as a wrestling style but as a (kayfabe and actual) gradual company-wide raising of in-ring standards. And like 90s AJPW, TJPW has practised its own form of in-ring kaizen throughout its history.
One of the main ways in which Japanese wrestling is distinct from the Western form is its greater focus on the journey from rookie to major player. Whereas in WWE a new superstar will tend to go on a winning run immediately after their debut as a means of establishing them as someone the audience should care about, Japanese newcomers almost always go on a lengthy losing streak to begin with (Kenta Kobashi, one of the leading lights of 90s AJPW, lost his first 77 matches in the company). Rather than tarring the wrestler with the failure brush for the rest of their career, the idea is that the fans will start to root for them as a plucky underdog, growing to love them as they get closer and closer to that elusive first win, cheering as they finally achieve it, and thereafter continuing to enjoy their slow, steady rise up the pecking order.
The reason this is so satisfying is because you can see the wrestler’s real-life in-ring skills progress at the same time as their kayfabe in-ring skills. Take TJPW’s Maki Itoh. Over the years her loyal simps have seen her go from being a failed idol who would lose every match handily, to a legitimate main eventer who, in a delicious role reversal, was able to delight in big-dogging SKE48’s Yuki Arai, who came into wrestling from a similar background. Once a fly to be swatted aside, she has become the mountain that rookies have to struggle to overcome. And none of this would have worked nearly as well if Itoh hadn’t started out as a legitimately dreadful in-ring wrestler. She’s always had the acting part down pat, but at the beginning of her career she could barely do a vertical suplex. And that’s great! Think how much less satisfying it would have been if Itoh had started out taking folks to the woodshed in a hesitant, unconvincing manner, or jobbed out hard while throwing out a barrage of flashy moves that would have led fans wondering why this asskicker kept losing.
Itoh is by no means alone in her kaizen. I first started watching TJPW in the summer of 2018, and at this point in time the general consensus was that the production and character work was high-level, but the in-ring was lacking when compared with other joshi feds. There weren’t many wrestlers on the roster who were considered truly proficient, and undercards could be a rough watch. Nowadays, however, the strength in depth is much greater, and TJPW’s big Korakuen Hall shows are almost always good-to-great from start to finish. Less prominent members of the roster have seized opportunities to show what they can do with both hands. Yuki Kamifuku, whose wrestling I had not previously rated whatsoever, won the secondary International Princess Championship in a shock result, and proceeded to go on an incredible run that both established her as an in-ring competitor and the formerly floundering belt as a prestigious accolade. Suzume, still only three years into her career, clearly talented but until recently without much in the way of statement singles performances, has turned out barnburner matches against Yuka Sakazaki, Miu Watanabe and Ryo Mizunami in the last few months, losing each time but giving off the vibe of a future star with every beat. And while the kaizen is palpable lower down the card, that’s just as true of the main event scene on which the King’s Road angle was so focused.
For me, the Princess of Princess Championship match between Yuka Sakazaki and Mizuki at TJPW’s inaugural Wrestle Princess show in 2020 represented a real watershed moment for the company’s main event scene. This event was the first time TJPW had run Tokyo Dome City Hall, and the two women put on a bout more than worthy of such an occasion. It was also the longest singles match in the promotion’s history, and while longer doesn’t necessarily equal better – as anyone who’s watched their fair share of modern-day IWGP title fights can attest – it felt like Sakazaki and Mizuki reached an extra gear that had (in my opinion) sometimes been missing from TJPW main events. Even people I know who are devoted fans of both wrestlers were blown away by how good it was. Since then, the quality of main events has consistently been extremely high not just emotionally but in terms of physical intensity and technical brilliance. The idea of Rika Tatsumi pulling out a Burning Hammer remains absurd, but as previously stated, you can walk the King’s Road without a single head drop as long as your roster is collectively practising kaizen.
TJPW wrestlers are presented first and foremost not as colleagues but as rivals, and this isn’t to everyone’s taste. I know people who find it off-putting that the company lacks out-and-out heels (with the exception of the now on-hiatus Neo Biishiki-gun) and truly heated feuds as traditionally understood. They see the post-show bows with the whole roster smiling and having fun together, and it leaves them cold. But for me, this collegiality is the point. The women of TJPW, in kayfabe, are a group of friends, but they’re a group of friends constantly inspiring each other to do better, to hit harder, to push through the pain more and more, and that in itself is extremely compelling in the same way the King’s Road was.
However, that’s not the only criticism TJPW’s detractors tend to make. While people who buy into the kaizen story accept that the overall ability of the roster is improving, they consequently feel compelled to ask: if that’s the case, why are the same faces still on top?
Kaisou 階層
All wrestling companies have their own particular kaisou, or hierarchy. But some promotions are more hierarchical than others, and few more so than 90s All Japan. Between 19 January 1991 – the start of Jumbo Tsuruta’s third and final reign with the Triple Crown – and 9 June 2000 – the last show before the old AJPW roster left to form NOAH – only 11 different people served as challenger for the company’s top title: Toshiaki Kawada (13 times), Kenta Kobashi (8), Mitsuharu Misawa (7), Akira Taue (7), Stan Hansen (5), Steve Williams (5), Jun Akiyama (4), Vader (2), Gary Albright (1), Yoshihiro Takayama (1) and Johnny Ace (1). To put it in even starker terms, in this period a whopping 65% of title challenges were brought by the same quartet: the so-called Four Pillars. (For perspective, in the same period 28 different men challenged for New Japan’s IWGP Heavyweight Championship.) Giant Baba’s booking during the King’s Road was logical but deeply conservative, and its drawbacks became evident in his refusal to put the Triple Crown on Jun Akiyama, an unbelievably capable worker and the man who had very clearly been pegged as the future. Akiyama had to wait until 2001 for his first singles title (in AJPW’s successor promotion), and by that time wrestling’s mainstream popularity was on the wane, so when Akiyama didn’t draw like the main eventers did in the 90s, it was back to Misawa and Kobashi as the focus.
When I started watching TJPW over four years ago, the undisputed “big three” were Miyu Yamashita, Yuka Sakazaki and Shoko Nakajima, and with some justification; in a promotion lacking many top-tier workers, positioning these women at the top made sense. But now the roster have stepped up their game in-ring, there remains what many consider a glass ceiling beneath this trio’s feet. Save for a four-month Rika Tatsumi run, these three between them have monopolised the company’s main title since January 2018.
This dynamic is very distinct from TJPW’s main competitor in the joshi market: STARDOM. To go back to management theory, you could say that TJPW has a tall structure and STARDOM has a flat structure. The latter’s upper card is very top-heavy, and most of the roster could believably beat each other on any given day. As if to illustrate this, the 2022 edition of STARDOM’s 5 Star Grand Prix saw 18 out of the tournament’s 26 entrants (just under 70%) finishing with a record between 8-4 and 6-6. Moreover, being new is no barrier to being positioned in the same echelon as established names. Since its acquisition by Bushiroad, STARDOM has embarked upon an aggressive recruitment drive, signing talent from other companies and often pushing them strong right out the gate. Himeka, formerly of Actwres girl’Z, reached the final of the 5 Star Grand Prix less than six months after joining, and MIRAI was given a shot at the World of Stardom title in her very first month. The latter is just one of multiple TJPW wrestlers who have joined STARDOM in recent years, with Mina Shirakawa, Unagi Sayaka and Natsupoi all having made the jump and found title success. It can seem as if TJPW’s reluctance to quickly elevate midcarders to main event status has left some talent frustrated, and eager to take a chance on moving to a company where there’s a greater chance of main events and title runs.
Really, whichever approach you prefer comes down to personal choice. Where one person might praise STARDOM for the company’s willingness to promote newcomers, I would tend to criticise them for skipping the journey. If Utami Hayashishita can reach the 5 Star final in her second month as a wrestler, where do you go from there? Doesn’t it make STARDOM’s existing roster seem a bit weak in kayfabe if women from smaller companies, who weren’t even top stars there, can come in and suddenly go on a tear (Giulia being an especially stark example)? If almost anyone can beat almost anyone else on any given day, how can you make a milestone win over a senior truly meaningful for a young wrestler’s career? And I think you can still ask these questions even though TJPW alumni have undoubtedly thrived within this environment. That’s just my personal bias. I am a King’s Road fan, after all.
Which is precisely why the criticism of TJPW’s big three for not deigning to share the stage with up-and-comers, as would happen in STARDOM, is misplaced (notwithstanding the faintly ludicrous notion that women in their late 20s and early 30s might constitute an old guard that needs to be put out to pasture). The beauty of the King’s Road, and TJPW’s particular version of it, is that kaizen and kaisou reinforce each other. Or, to put it simply, you can’t tell the story of this promotion-wide escalation in intensity and ability if the people at the top aren’t sticking around and improving too. In AJPW, establishing yourself as a main event player was one thing, but being Misawa was another. Baba waited years and years before booking the other Four Pillars to beat Misawa. Taue first did it in 1996, Kobashi in 1997, and before 1998 the only win Kawada claimed over Misawa immediately followed a half-hour Kobashi/Misawa time limit draw, so it can hardly be considered a “clean” triumph. And this isn’t because Baba was a risk-averse booker. Putting Misawa over Jumbo Tsuruta in 1990 was a seismic shift in AJPW’s landscape, and Jumbo himself was allowed to go Broadway (alongside Baba) against Dory and Terry Funk in only his third match in AJPW. But Baba recognised that if you are going to tell a decade-spanning story of kaizen and kaisou, the big wins have to feel earned.
TJPW, too, realise that the hierarchy gives the payoffs more weight. What better way to show how younger and newer wrestlers have stepped up their game than having them truly struggle to overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle? If TJPW’s business drops off then there will always be the risk of a seemingly nailed-on future superstar becoming another Akiyama, the biggest casualty of the King’s Road. But there is no sign of that just yet, and so no reason the company shouldn’t stick to its guns. When Juria Nagano gets her first title, it won’t be because of her TikTok following or her movie roles gave her a megapush before she was ready, it’ll be because she clawed her way there over the likes of Moka Miyamoto and Kaya Toribami first. When Suzume gets her signature singles win, it’ll mean more because we’ve seen her fall short so many times before; as Samuel Beckett wrote, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” And for all that people grumble about “missing the boat” every time Yamashita beats Itoh when it looks for all the world like it’s finally going to be the Cutest in the World’s moment, when Itoh’s big win finally comes it’s going to be so goddamn sweet, because she’ll have beaten the biggest and best version of Yamashita to date, not a fading star who was there for the taking.
In the end, TJPW’s last few years have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the King’s Road is not a style. It was a storyline, and a storyline is replicable. It was never circumscribed by time or place. It was never Baba’s booking, Misawa’s forearms, Kobashi’s lariats, Kawada’s head drops, Taue’s chokeslams. King’s Road can also be Yamashita’s kicks, Sakazaki’s mighty forearms, Nakajima’s lucha, Itoh’s headbutts, Tatsumi’s hip attacks, doing battle in the main event. It can be Kamifuku’s big boots, Watanabe’s giant swings, Hikari Noa’s rapid-fire dropkicks, battling away to try and chop down a titan for the first time. It can be Pom Harajuku’s shin kicks, Neko Haruna’s cat scratches, a rookie’s first little tribulations to set them on the path to glory. It can even be the Good Night Express. The King’s Road was (and is) the road itself, and TJPW has spent its history showing that, with enough hard work and determination, anybody – even us – can walk it.
[1] The term used in Japan for a particularly hard-hitting bout is “cement match”.