Joshi Spotlight: Bull Nakano Interviews Kayo Noumi

It’s another Bull Nakano interview… this one of lesser-known star Kayo Noumi! Kayo was a minor rookie at the point I’m in for my Joshi Spotlights, but it’s interesting to hear her talk about the struggles as a scrub moving up in the strict Zenjo hierarchy of All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling in the late 1990s. Kayo stuck with it and had a pretty long career, though nowhere near the length of many of the ’80s stars that preceded her- she was “only” in the business for ten years, whereas most of them did 20+. Noumi is particularly notable because she quit REPEATEDLY due to how tough everything was.

These interviews are transcribed by my friend MoskowDiskow on Twitter. My Notes are in bold with “Jab’s Notes” ahead of them, so you know it’s my additions.

– Noumi first got into pro-wrestling when she and a friend rented the 1991/92 Japan Grand Prix and Tag League VHS tapes in middle school. She was a regular fan for several years, went to Big Egg, threw tape for her favorites, etc.

– During training, she was skinny and struggled to do the workouts. She failed the pro-test twice before passing. Nanae Takahashi was apparently the top performing trainee in her class, and was something of a leader among the young girls. Noumi says Takahashi always had her back and did a lot to help her out and keep her going. (Jab’s Notes: Nanae ended up becoming a pretty big star for her era, and was a name in early Stardom, and currently is in Marigold, Rossy Ogawa’s new promotion)

– Her favorite wrestler was Etsuko Mita. Once she joined, she said she never really got to talk to Mita because chances to speak with seniors are very rare, and she had to use all her opportunities to chat to issue apologies, because…

– She ran away FIVE times during training. Bull was flabbergasted by this, as it’s a very high number. She said she ran away due to being homesick, the work being too hard, etc the first few times, and the last time was when she fled with Mogami which she understandably did not want to talk about. She says Takahashi was the one who reached out to her to convince her to return.

(Jab’s Notes: So uhhhhh this was apparently due to some REALLY vicious bullying going on within the company, as it was pretty normal for one generation to treat the generation immediately below them like crap. Japan’s usual “don’t talk trash about your coworkers/other people” thing, usually about keeping the peace and not rocking the boat, is definitely in play here. Even years after the fact she’s not going to be big on dissing certain people publicly. But the bullying was bad enough that Mari Mogami has a career from 1995-1996 and never returned.)

– She was in the doghouse so often for running away that she was regularly assigned the worst job of all – cleaning Aja’s cans. (Jab’s Notes: Aja used these big, rectangular oil cans as weapons) Meaning, she had to take fresh cans and empty out the oil into jugs, then scrub and polish the cans until they were shiny enough for Aja’s liking. One day she tried to carry too many at once, and dropped a pile of them. The oil spilled out and soaked the seniors’ luggage. Nanae stayed up all night trying to help clean up, but it didn’t work, so in the morning Noumi….ran away again. She says she wandered around Shibuya all day thinking of quitting but then when she got back she decided to just suck it up and start the apology cycle all over again.

(Jab’s Notes: You may be wondering “why the hell was she carrying the oil cans so close to luggage?” but like… she was born in 1976, making her about 19-20 years old here, was probably stressed out and tired and beaten up… none of which aids in strong decision-making)

– When Noumi quit alongside Mogami in 1995, they literally ran off and skipped a massive show at Yokohama Arena. On top of this, Noumi was scheduled for a match against another promotion, which makes things even more outrageous. Bull was astounded by the magnitude of all this and couldn’t stop laughing in disbelief while Noumi apologized 28 years after the fact.

(Jab’s Notes: Yeah, this would have been annoying for the other promotion, who were expected to have one of their own wrestlers featured in a Yokohama Arena show- a big deal at that point, and would have been incredibly rude & disrespectful to that wrestler. Japanese culture has a big thing about inconveniencing others, to the point where a universal “excuse me/pardon me”- “sumimasen“- literally means “it never ends”. As in “My burden to you never ends…”)

– After quitting for real, she moved back to her parents home and was preparing to become an esthetician like her older sister. She worked hard for a year, but as time passed she felt increasingly regretful about the timing of her quitting (quitting immediately -after- taking all the free training/housing/food is basically the worst time to quit). After working in the real world, she called up Kahoru Kage and went back with a more resilient mindset.

Bull does a recap and can’t stop laughing about the fact that someone was able to come back with a phone call after quitting 5 times, as this would have never happened in her day. Bull asks if everyone just welcomed her back with open arms, and Noumi says things were fairly normal on that front. She talks a bit about the “New Zenjo” era (aka ATHENA eta) and how Hotta and Toyota were like her father and mother respectively (this is more a seniority relationship comment than a personal one). She goes through the hierarchy structure at the time in more detail.

(Jab’s Notes: This would have been “near-bankruptcy Zenjo”, which had a gutted roster after Kyoko Inoue took on most of the semi-experienced rookies to Neo Ladies, and most of the major veterans quit, leaving Yumiko Hotta as Champion and Manami Toyota as the next person on the hierarchy)

Noumi talks about how during this era things changed greatly in Zenjo, with the wrestlers all mostly getting along, going out to eat with each other, and so forth. (In the past, there would have been very little if any social mixing between people of different levels). Noumi says that in contrast to the previous era which was downright frightening at times, that everyone pulled together to make Zenjo work, and in contributing to the effort, she felt much more fulfilled by the work, training, and chores in comparison to her first run in 1995. Noumi seems to have genuinely enjoyed her time with Zenjo during this period.

Noumi talks for a while about the origins of MihoKayo and Kiss no Sekai. (Jab’s Notes: She’s talking about Miho Wakizawa, her tag team partner, and a singing group made of up Zenjo rookies) Nothing interesting being said, really. Noumi was nervous at the start of Kiss no Sekai, since she had no experience and had not only the promotion but Fuji TV relying on her. They talk about how Miyuki Fujii was the only one of their class that was left out, which Noumi feels sorry about. Noumi says that while Kiss no Sekai were busy doing music stuff, Fujii had to pick up the slack in terms of day to day work. Noumi is really thankful for that.

They mark out over Momoe Nakanishi’s athletic ability for a bit, then put over Takahashi as well. Noumi states seriously that Momoe might have been the best pure athlete in women’s pro history. Noumi says that she quickly realized that she’d never be able to compete with that, so she started looking for other ways to stand out. She freely admits that she was clearly the worst worker of the lot, especially early on. She seems to have felt much more comfortable after she found her style of running around and firing up (and getting pummeled mercilessly lol).

They talk about the drudgery of daily work at the Zenjo dojo, then Noumi randomly says she has asthma and had a hard time controlling it during fast paced matches. She says she had severe attacks a few times a year, often requiring hospitalization. She had a special medication that she could take before matches to help with it.