General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Rikidozan (力道山)

Rikidozan: A Hero Extraordinary (역도산, 力道山) is a 2004 South Korean biographical drama directed by Song Hae-sung that dramatizes the life of Rikidozan (November 14, 1924 – December 15, 1963), the Korean-born wrestler who became postwar Japan's biggest sporting hero.¹^•² The film stars Sul Kyung-gu in the title role, with Miki Nakatani as his wife Aya and Tatsuya Fuji as his patron Takeo Kanno, and it was produced by Sidus Pictures with financing from CJ Entertainment.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	역도산 (Yeokdosan); English title Rikidozan: A Hero Extraordinary²
Director and writer	Song Hae-sung, with adaptation credit shared with Koo Dong-hoe and Oh Seung-uk²
Korean release	December 15, 2004, the 41st anniversary of Rikidozan's death; 137 minutes; distributor CJ Entertainment²^•⁴
Japanese release	March 4, 2006, in a 149-minute version distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment⁵
Budget	10 billion won (about 1 billion yen), described as exceptional for a Korean film at the time³
Lead performance	Sul Kyung-gu gained 28 kg in five months for the role and performed his own wrestling scenes⁶^•⁷
Korean box office	670,000 admissions in the first four days; total admissions reported as 1,386,179 by Cine21 and 1,018,285 by the Korean Film Council database⁸^•⁹^•¹⁰

Spoilers

Plot

The film opens on the night of December 8, 1963, in Tokyo, with Japan's top professional wrestler bleeding from a knife wound in a speeding car, then flashes back to September 1950, when the third-ranked sumo wrestler rampages through the Japan Sumo Association offices after being told that a non-pure-Japanese cannot reach sumo's highest rank.⁹ In the film's telling, the young Kim Sin-rak comes to Japan alone in 1945 to escape poverty and become a sumo wrestler, rises to the rank of sekiwake (sumo's third-highest rank, below grand champion), but is blocked from the top by an invisible ethnic barrier; he despairs, drinks, then learns of professional wrestling, a world where anyone can fight regardless of race or nationality, and leaves alone for the United States.⁶

Returning two years later as a trained professional wrestler, he starts a wrestling business in Japan. At the historic first match, Japanese spectators demoralized by the country's defeat in World War II weep as they watch him knock down American wrestlers; the match was carefully calculated and scripted, but it makes him a national hero.⁹^•¹⁰ From there his life begins to go wrong: the film depicts his feud match with the judoka Masahiko Kimura, his relationship with his wife Aya and with the promoter who controls the business, his violent temperament, his talent as a businessman, and his death after being stabbed by a yakuza in 1963.¹⁷

Interpretation

Scholarly responses have focused on how the film handles nationality. Jung Young-kwon of Dongguk University argues that the film, produced during the Korean Wave boom for both the Korean and Japanese markets, removed evident nationalism and ethnicity to reduce resistance in international markets, presenting Rikidozan as a "world citizen" who was neither Korean nor Japanese; he diagnoses this as an ideological closure, since the film could not represent the history, ethnicity, and nationality of North and South Korea, and notes that the film was not a commercial or critical success in either market.¹⁹ A separate line of scholarship examines how Rikidozan's image itself was contested after his death: North Korean state propaganda recast him as a patriot who hated Japan and dedicated his matches to Kim Il-sung, a telling that contrasts with the Japanese narrative of a postwar national hero.¹³ The film sits between these two national stories, which is the tension its Korean production was positioned to address.¹⁴

The historical Rikidozan

The subject of the film was born Kim Sin Rak in what is now North Korea while Korea was under Japanese occupation, following the 1910 annexation. He later took the Japanese name Mitsuhiro Momota when he was adopted by the sumo wrestler Minosuke Momota, and he became a sumo wrestler before turning to professional wrestling.¹¹ While Rikidozan was alive, the press hesitated to report on his Korean origins, which stayed a closely held secret for years beyond his passing.¹¹

As a wrestler, Rikidozan used a karate chop as his signature move and dominated Japanese professional wrestling in the 1950s and 1960s, drawing the Japanese public into frenzies of enthusiasm.¹² In the era of street-corner television, his televised defeats of foreign wrestlers made him a national hero in Japan, and he is also regarded as a hero in South and North Korea.⁸ A historical study describes him as the first postwar hero who embraced Japanese ideals.¹³

His death was violent. On December 8, 1963, he had a confrontation in a bar with a yakuza member and was stabbed with a short knife; he died in the hospital on December 15, 1963, from complications.¹¹ After his death, with the founder of the Japan Wrestling Association gone, the company promoted two of his protégés, Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki, as featured stars on separate television networks.¹¹

Production

The project originated on the Korean side and was framed around a subject Japanese cinema had avoided. The Agency for Cultural Affairs program notes state that the film looks at Rikidozan's light and shadow, glory and setbacks, forty years after his death, a life that had rarely been discussed openly.¹⁴ Producer Shinya Kawai of Amuse said in an interview that he had known Sidus's Tcha Sung-jai and Kim Sun-ah for more than five years, that the two sides had each been considering a Rikidozan film and decided to merge the projects, and that financing ultimately came entirely from the Korean side, making it a Korean film in form.¹⁵

Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan) acquired the Japanese distribution rights, covering theatrical release, DVD and video, television broadcast, and video-on-demand, from CJ Entertainment in October 2004.³ The production was a Japan-Korea co-production in practice, with Japanese staff and cast including cinematographer contributions and art director Naofumi Inagaki, and location shooting completed in both countries.³

The lead performance. Sul Kyung-gu, coming off Silmido, prepared intensively: he gained 28 kg in five months, trained in professional wrestling, and mastered Japanese dialogue, performing the wrestling scenes without a stand-in.⁶^•⁷ In a 2004 interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun, he said that gaining more than 15 kg in about six months while also learning wrestling and Japanese had seemed impossible, and he described Rikidozan as a hero who shook the Japanese archipelago yet a pitiable man without a single person to share his home, country, or life.¹⁶

Release and reception

The Korean release was set deliberately for December 15, 2004, the anniversary of Rikidozan's death.⁴ It opened strongly, drawing 670,000 admissions and roughly 470 million yen in its first four days, which the trade press reported as the second-highest Korean opening at that time after Taegukgi.⁸ Total admissions are reported differently: Cine21 lists 1,386,179, while the Korean Film Council database lists 1,018,285 admissions and a total gross of $4,673,203 on 223 screens.⁹^•¹⁰

In Japan. The Japanese release was pushed back, and Sony Pictures exhibited the film in Japanese theaters in March 2006 only after extensive re-editing and re-dubbing; in a year when 52 Korean films were shown in Japan, it did not make the top ten, and the financial gain in Japan was marginal.¹⁸ The Yomiuri review found the portrayal of Rikidozan as a serious and tragic figure unexpected, noting that a Japanese director would have made a very different film, and concluded that while Rikidozan is a symbol of postwar Japan's economic growth, this film represented the experience of the Korean people.¹⁸ The critic Shimizu Setsu, writing for eiga.com, judged the feud match with Kimura nearly accurate but regretted the omission of the bout with Lou Thesz, calling Sul Kyung-gu's performance the element that compensates for the film's conventional direction.¹⁷ On the Kinenote aggregate the film holds an average score of 67.3 from 93 users.⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026