If you grew up watching wrestling in the 1950s and 1960s, you didn’t have to look far for a villain. Every generation gets the bad guys it deserves, and for postwar America, nothing got heat faster than a wrestler in a black robe, bowing to the crowd, sneering at Uncle Sam. That was Mitsu Arakawa.
Born Mack Mitsukazu Arakawa in Honolulu in 1927, he was Hawaiian by birth, American by passport, and Japanese by billing. In real life, he served in the U.S. Army in 1945. In the ring, he was the angry survivor of Hiroshima, holding a grudge against America so hot it could melt steel. It wasn’t true, but wrestling has never been about truth—it’s about selling tickets. And nothing sold tickets like a snarling Japanese heel telling U.S. fans they were weak.
Arakawa made his debut in 1953, trained by The Great Yamato. He was 5’7”, 240 pounds, squat and mean, with a face built to scowl. From the start, he was a heel. There was no other option. He leaned into the stereotype, spit at the crowd, bowed mockingly before smashing forearms into babyfaces, and left audiences ready to riot.
The Cousin of Kinji Shibuya
In 1957, Arakawa broke into the Minneapolis territory, home of Verne Gagne’s NWA Minneapolis Boxing & Wrestling Club (later the AWA). There he was billed as Kinji Shibuya’s cousin. Together, Arakawa and Shibuya formed one of the most hated tag teams of the decade.
That August, they defeated The Kalmikoffs to win the NWA World Tag Team Titles (Minneapolis version). It was villainy squared: two Japanese heels beating a pair of Russian heels in the middle of Cold War America. Fans didn’t know who to hate more, but they hated them enough to sell out arenas. The reign lasted until November, when the Brunetti brothers relieved them of the belts. But Arakawa had tasted gold—and heat.
The Heavyweight Detour
Arakawa wasn’t just a tag man. In 1966, he shocked fans by beating Dick the Bruiser for the WWA World Heavyweight Title in Indianapolis. Think about that: a squat Japanese heel taking down America’s beer-swilling, bar-fighting folk hero. It was blasphemy. It was brilliant.
The reign didn’t last—Wilbur Snyder took the belt back in ’67—but for a year, Mitsu Arakawa was the top dog in the Midwest, and crowds paid good money to see him get his teeth kicked in.
International Villain
Wrestling is carny theater, and Arakawa played his role worldwide. He toured Australia in 1965, 1966, and 1970, even winning the IWA World Heavyweight Championship his first time there. He worked Canada with Shibuya, grabbing the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Titles in 1963. He went wherever promoters needed a bad guy and left with boos ringing in his ears.
In the late ’60s, he and Professor Toru Tanaka formed The Rising Suns in the WWWF. Their gimmick? A pair of sinister Japanese invaders. Their accomplishment? Becoming the first WWWF International Tag Team Champions in 1969. The tournament they supposedly won never happened—it was just handed to them as a storyline. That’s wrestling: history made up on the spot, sold as fact, booed into legend.
They dropped the belts to Tony Marino and Victor Rivera later that year, but by then Arakawa had cemented himself as a fixture of the East Coast heel scene.
The Tag Gold Years
Arakawa was never the prettiest worker, but he was effective. He knew how to grind a match, how to make a crowd seethe, how to feed a comeback. He and Dr. Moto (better known as Tor Kamata) beat Pat O’Connor and Wilbur Snyder for the AWA World Tag Titles in 1967, holding them for over a year before losing to The Crusher and Dick the Bruiser. That reign made him a household name in the Midwest—not in a good way, but in wrestling, being hated is good for business.
The End of the Road
By the mid-1970s, wrestling was changing. The territories were evolving, TV was expanding, and a new wave of stars were coming in. Arakawa’s gimmick—once molten heat—was starting to cool. He retired in 1976, after 23 years of being one of wrestling’s most reliable heels.
In 1973, he had appeared in The Wrestling Queen, a documentary about rookie Vivian Vachon. For a moment, fans got to see behind the curtain: Mitsu Arakawa the man, not just the caricature. But for most of his career, the lines blurred. He lived the gimmick, because in the old days, you had to.
Life After Wrestling
Arakawa retired to Concord, California, with his wife Patti and their three kids. He’d spent decades being spit on, cursed at, and chased out of arenas. Away from the ring, he was just Mack Mitsukazu Arakawa—a father, a husband, a man who had served his country in the Army and then made a living pretending to hate it.
On April 17, 1997, he died of heart failure at 69. The boos were long gone. The riots were forgotten. But the legend of Mitsu Arakawa—the squat, snarling Japanese heel who made Midwestern grandmas foam at the mouth—remains.
Legacy of a Heel
Mitsu Arakawa’s career is a reminder of a simpler, uglier wrestling era. He was billed as a survivor of Hiroshima, a man carrying atomic rage against the U.S.—a gimmick rooted in exploitation and xenophobia. It worked because promoters knew their crowds, and Arakawa knew how to deliver.
He wasn’t a Ric Flair promo or a Lou Thesz technician. He was a blunt instrument, a villain you could believe in because he made you angry just by existing. That’s what wrestling needed. That’s what sold tickets.
And for over two decades, Mitsu Arakawa played the part so well that fans still remember the name, even if they don’t remember the matches.
Final Word
Mitsu Arakawa will never be remembered as a hero. He’ll never be remembered as a pioneer of technical wrestling or as a mainstream superstar. But he will always be remembered as a heel—one of the best of his time. He made audiences scream for his blood, night after night, across the world.
He was a man who served in the U.S. Army, then made his living pretending to hate America. A Hawaiian-born son of immigrants who played the role of vengeful foreigner so convincingly that entire crowds wanted to lynch him.
That’s wrestling. That’s Mitsu Arakawa.
A villain by trade, a worker by craft, a family man by life—and a reminder that in wrestling, sometimes the darkest characters are the ones who shine longest.